The 119 could stay on 220th all the way to 56th, and then go south. It is nowhere near as valuable as 130th when it comes to bus connections, but it does have some potential. I suppose you could truncate/divert some Highway 99 busses there, but even then doing it 200th to get to Lynnwood TC would make more sense. is not really “on the way” for any existing or proposed major bus corridors (871 runs there but only limited peak hours), unlike 130th with (potentially) Lake City - Bitter Lake busses. Sometimes that is where the most bang per buck is. Na, sometimes the most pro-transit thing to do is to NOT build a LR station and invest in supporting infrastructure instead. But why do that when you could just invest in bus infrastructure to boost ridership at the existing stations while not slowing Link down for the other LR pass-through riders? All the predicted riders at 130th were predicted to be existing Link riders scavenged from Northgate or 148th.Īnd yes, you can obviously build the station at a cost of $50M to $75M and then spend another $10M to $30M on bus infrastructure to generate new ridership that makes it appear like the station is performing. The problem with the 130th St Station is that the original ST analysis indicated that the station brought in exactly 0 (zero) net new riders to the system. I.e., ridership that is merely scavenged or redistributed from adjacent stations is discounted as not providing significant new benefit. However, instead of looking just at riders at a given station, they look at net new riders to the system.

That would be supplemented with connecting bus service, mostly from the east, where there are apartments as well as a growing number of medical and ST does perform analysis similar to what you suggest. If anything, the walk-up ridership case is stronger there than most of the stations north of Northgate (like 145th). There is a smattering of retail, medical and office work there (including Mountlake Terrace City Hall). There are apartments as well as existing bus service on 220th. Not only does it save those riders a significant amount of time (and increase ridership) but it creates a better transit network.īack to your original point, the time delay to pick up riders is minimal and would be more than made up for by increased ridership. This may not justify a light rail extension, but it certainly justifies a station. Oh, there will be a handful who walk, and a handful who drive and park, but the bulk of riders will arrive via a bus. Every single one is heavily dependent on bus service. There is not a single Capitol Hill among them, let alone a U-District. None of the stations north of Northgate will have a huge number of walk-up riders. Eddie is right, although you clearly don’t understand his argument. You could say the same thing for every station north of Northgate. Additionally you’d have a faster LR line. You could just as well bus those same riders to one of the pre-existing stations and save the cost of the new stations. By worldwide standards, Link has stops that are way too far apart, not too close together. Large stop spacing leads to lower ridership and less frequency (which leads to even lower ridership). No, go down that line of reasoning and you end up with the Paris Metro or New York Subway. Go down that line of reasoning and pretty soon you get a real slow line that serves very few people well. ST needs to resist “bus think” where every little cluster of jobs or little activity center deserves an infill station.

Rail maze 1 20.northeast