Next Years Starter Line and Lynnwood Link Results

The October release of the Sound Transit 2024 Financial Plan and Proposed Budget includes the following excerpt in introduction:

Sound Transit’s $3 billion proposed 2024 budget highlights the agency in the early stages of an historic era, as our mission to connect more people to more places across the Puget Sound 

Yet Sound Transit’s 2024 plan will do nothing to “connect more people to more places”.  Connecting more people requires providing more riders with access.  Yet Sound Transit’s Northgate Link October 2021 demonstrated the lack of access limited ridership to a fraction of their 41,000 to 49,000 predictions. Many if not most of those riders previously rode buses, so don’t qualify as “more people”.  (They no longer release the quarterly service provided reports that would have detailed the result)  

 

Starter Line access, except for parking at Redmond T/C and Bel-Red/130^th station, is limited to those within walking distance of 5 stations along route, far less than what’s currently available with Rapid Ride B and ST550. Again, many if not most previously rode those routes into Bellevue and beyond to Seattle. Very few of the Starter Line of Sound Transit’s projected 7000 riders will be “more people”.

 

Like Starter Line most Lynnwood Link riders won’t be “more people”.  Sound Transit reduced its 2016 prediction of 35,000 to 57,000 added riders, to 25,300 to 34,200.  Yet, many if not most Link riders will be those who previously rode ST 510-513 and Community Transit 400 routes into Seattle.

 

The budget introduction also included the following:

Our work and our major achievements throughout 2023 set the stage for our ambitious 2024 roll-out and for our continued expansion under the voter-approved ST3 plan, the largest mass transit expansion in the country. 

The budget included a Summary by Mode with the following plan for Link Light Rail:

The first phase of the new 2-Line, providing services on the Eastside, including 8 new stations, is expected to open in Spring 2024; along with the extension of the 1-Line to Lynnwood, including 4 new stations expected to open in Fall 2024, both of which will increase the existing track alignment to over 40 miles. 

Yet Sound Transit’s Development Plan 2023-2028 includes the following for 2024.

 

Evaluate routing for Routes 510, 511, 512 ,513: -  Supports expansion of 1 Line

 

That by 2028 Sound Transit plans to “Evaluate” 22 ST Express Bus Routes.  The 2024 budget’s chart “System expansion and current service” describes future ST Express bus routes as “re-evaluated annually.”  

 

The bottom line is, while Sound Transit is creating the country’s largest light rail transit system expansion, the extensions do nothing to increase light rail capacity.  Thus, using the extensions to replace bus routes will reduce transit capacity, the more the lost bus routes, the more the lost ability to move people.  

 

Next year’s Starter Line and Lynnwood operations will be the next demonstration of the folly of Sound Transit’s approach to implementing “voter approved” light rail extensions without adding access.