SEATTLE Rail & Bus

[Nouvellecosse]

That's a great idea to have an express loop that bypasses the main at-grade stretch with the higher station concentration. Well, as long as there's enough room to add the extra dedicated tracks along the BNSF corridor. Although it technically wouldn't even need to involve the streetcar as they could just give line 1 greater frequency. Instead of it being services 1 and 2, there would also be #3 which would use the more direct route to SeaTac and Angle Lake. Each of the three services could get 8tph (every 7.5 min) giving the shared sections 24tph. But if that wasn't needed in the northern section, one of the services could end at Roosevelt or E-District. The extra speed would help when the line expands further south. The loop service could end at SeaTac while the bypass service could continue further to Federal Way or even to Tacoma on a future phase.

[mhays]

The bus tunnel helped ridership, sure, but it was also a response to Downtown streets that were flooded with buses. Even today, three of the six major Downtown avenues have heavy bus usage -- two are one way with a bus lane each, one is two-way bus only.

The city (meaning metro area) is full of bus lanes, whether for BRT-lite services (another just opened the other day, up Madison from Downtown) or simply arterials and freeways with lots of buses.

As for Link Light Rail running on streetcar tracks...not a chance. The first two fatal flaws (several come to mind) are that the trains are longer than the blocks, and the Rainier Valley needs real trains.

A faster connection to Sea-Tac would be nice (fun fact: Sea-Tac is the airport and SeaTac is the city), but wouldn't save enough time to make an extra wait worthwhile.

[Nouvellecosse]

Yeah it wouldn't work if you were just splitting the existing service. You'd need to add additional service so that the non-shared line segments would have similar frequency as now.

[Tcmetro]

The bypass line would require 5.5 miles of new track and probably one stop at Georgetown. Travel time from Tukwila Intl Blvd to SODO would probably be about 12 minutes, compared to 24 minutes on the MLK alignment.

I recall that with the diesel-trolley buses purchased for the tunnel weighed a lot more than normal buses so Metro never followed through on the purchase of a second order of 400 more buses. The bus tunnel never was used to it's full potential - and the bus congestion issue is still a problem.

[mhays]

It was pretty full of buses. Their inherent inefficiency was a problem that might have reduced ambitions. They tried to run them in convoys of maybe four at a time to improve on that, but any slowdown in any bus, like due to a wheelchair, would slow everybody. That's inherent to all busways.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by mhays

It was pretty full of buses. Their inherent inefficiency was a problem that might have reduced ambitions. They tried to run them in convoys of maybe four at a time to improve on that, but any slowdown in any bus, like due to a wheelchair, would slow everybody. That's inherent to all busways.

Were the buses not able to pass in the stations? The only time I've been to Seattle was during the period in the late 2000s when the tunnel was closed for the light rail conversion. So I have not ridden in the tunnel either as a bus rider or as a train rider.

[mhays]

The stations have middle lanes for maintenance and passing. But the original buses were electric trolleys using overhead wires (with diesel engines for use outside the tunnel). They could only pass if the stopped bus took its poles down. Even later when they had clean-burn buses with no wires (after the 2009 conversion to dual bus/train use iirc), buses didn't pass unless the front one had a major issue. So there was a lot of waiting.

Those stations were hell to build. I don't know the dimensions but iirc they used every inch of the street width (60' or so) to accommodate three lanes and two platforms. These were cut-and-cover despite the rest of the tunnel being bored. At street level there were temporary catwalks to building entrances. This was a big part of why Seattle voters rebelled against Downtown development with the CAP initiative in 1989.