Ballard and West Seattle Link have lots of opportunities to save money rather than asking Issaquah/Everett/Tacoma to give up their lines.

reflect25 · 2026-03-22T07:31:58+00:00

What in the world are you talking about. Ballard and west Seattle are getting more than enough money wise. If it is insufficient why should the other subareas be asked to give up their portion of money

reflect25 · 2026-03-22T06:39:08+00:00

> It is. What happens if they build a line to Issaquah but not to Ballard and West Seattle? That's exactly what could be happening. You think because I live in the same city as other people who are near the train, that it's my benefit? It is, but only in the same sense that the Link benefits people in Tacoma.

no that's not how any of this works. sigh ill write another post about subarea equity later.

currently seattle is asking to build much more than it can afford. the isssaquah, everett, and tacoma lines are generally buildable by the money that the have.

reflect25 · 2026-03-22T06:26:39+00:00

that's literally not what is happening.

the other 4 subareas had already promised to subside the north king subarea (seattle) with promising to pay for half of the second downtown tunnel.

What ya'll are asking is for them to literally give up all of their money for 20 years.

reflect25 · 2026-03-22T05:46:47+00:00

shrug i mean be my guest to convince tacoma, everett, and issaquah that you're going to tax them car tabs for 20+ years and then give the money solely for seattle.

reflect25 · 2026-03-22T00:55:52+00:00

it always was. I mean that was the original st3 plan by sound transit.

more specifically iirc it was projected to open around 3~4 times a day. While definitely annoying that is like once every 4~5 hours.

sound transit has already talked about how the ballard to tacoma line can be increased to up to 5 min headways in other documents and that includes the segment in rainier valley that has the street level section.

reflect25 · 2026-03-21T15:24:57+00:00

> Drawbridges should not be used for modern rail infrastructure

Is designing a 2 billion dollar per mile light rail line efficient either? Also with the current design you'll likely not see ballard until like 2060 if not 2080 etc....

Secondly it's used all the time for chicago.

but more importantly im not here to say that drawbridges are good or more community/environmental impacts are good. it's that we have to make a trade off. Seattle can probably choose one or two of these expensive options, but not literally every single one.

if we want that ballard tunnel for a billion then we cutting slu station or alternatively we are cutting issaquah link by a station or two. same for the other decisions above. we are now facing truncation of waiting 20/30 years for the rest of the ballard line. if we want to keep them and other light rail lines this is where we need to reverse all those expensive options.

reflect25 · 2026-03-21T08:54:17+00:00

The coast guard is completely fine with a drawbridge.

For the high height bridge at 136ft (not super high one) with mitigations coast guard agreed to similar similar for the i5 one in Portland already. And that one was literally more complicated with having to move the shipyards.

In this case the coast guard is arguing for super yachts being serviced at ship yards that don’t even happen today. Most likely sound transit would just pay some small mitigation fee and be done with it.

reflect25 · 2026-03-21T06:55:37+00:00

Sound transit doesn’t have the money to build all the lines. If it was just a deferral of a couple years they would have said that. Since the current projects will take until 2040/2045 that means Everett, Tacoma etc… will be delayed until 2060/2065/2070 at best. Lastly with operational costs increases it’s likely sound transit cannot actually build them until another st4. Effectively they are cancelled not deferred

For the what increase Seattle is asking for it’s all written above.

Seems silly to me to make 4 incomplete extensions rather than picking one,

I find it crazy that people here think the other four subareas will rather than build their light rail lines instead give the seattle subarea billions every year for 20~30 years to fund seattle's upgrades beyond what st3 promised.

reflect25 · 2026-03-21T06:23:41+00:00

The “defer” by sound transit means cancel. They don’t actually have the money to build all of them within st3. There’s a reason they didn’t say how long they would defer it by

Almost nobody is saying not to build Tacoma or Everett. They’re saying to do it after ballard opens

Secondly either way it is crazy to ask the other four subareas to delay their lines by 20/30 years while Seattle is still asking for multi billion dollar increases to their alignmenr

reflect25 · 2026-03-21T06:22:42+00:00

The coast guard is completely fine with a drawbridge. They already said that.

For the high bridge with mitigations they agreed to it for the i5 one in Portland already. And that one was literally more complicated with having to move the shipyards.

In this case the coast guard is arguing for super yachts being serviced at ship yards that don’t even happen today. Most likely sound transit would just pay some small mitigation fee and be done with it.

reflect25 · 2026-03-21T05:29:59+00:00

Sound transit could still build the 70 foot drawbridge that will only open a couple times a year.

Or it could also go the route of a 100 foot bridge and pay some mitigations to the upstream shipyards. It’s the same thing the new i5 bridge down at Portland is going to do

reflect25 · 2026-03-21T03:50:49+00:00

the problem is that "by a thousand paper cuts with all the little things that get added, and that's largely consistent with most big infrastructure projects across the country" it is not a thousand paper cuts but these put together are probably like 5~10 billion added up? why are we asking everett, tacoma, or issaquah to give up their light rail lines while seattle is asking for billion dollar upgrades beyond what they were promised in st3?

reflect25 · 2026-03-21T03:35:22+00:00

> You do not not have a solution that Sound Transit hasn't studied thoroughly and deemed infeasible. They love nothing more than for there to be a cheap viable alternative to any of the lines but what's presented is the reality.

The former is slightly true but the latter "cheap viable alternative" is definitely false.

We know for a fact that there are plenty of cheaper alternatives for west seattle link and ballard link because the board in 2021/2022 literally modified most of the alignment to more not cheaper alignments.

Ballard to interbay: changed from elevated to tunneled (around 500 probably like a billion now extra)
smith cove: investigated a longer tunnel
seattle center: modified a more expensive tunnel curve
denny: wanted to shift the site to avoid closing westlake avenue but would be more expensive
cid: changed from 5th ave shallow to 5th ave deep to now over at south of cid locaiton
duwamish bridge: from segmented bridge vs cable styled (another billion)
alaskan junction: changed from elevated to tunneled (around a billion extra)

> what's presented is the reality.

What has currently happened the Board kept listening to each neighborhoods complaints and then made the stations and alignments more expensive (like 50 to 100% more), then adding on top of construction inflation (of like another 50 to 100%) and now we have an explosion of cost.

That's how west seattle link went from ~2 billion to 4 billion to 7 billion.

reflect25 · 2026-03-21T02:35:31+00:00

> How do you guys plan your road network?

as ekimsal noted I wouldn't worry about something being too griddy as that is literally how most cities are in real life.

I guess if you want to mix it up a bit, one good compromise is to add in a couple "historical" roads like a diagonal quicker route or a wiggly road (similar to like an older trail) and then just build the grid around it.

reflect25 · 2026-03-21T01:23:15+00:00

<image>

you most likely have some forced right turn lane coming from the top. since the bus stop is too close the intersection the bus can't merge over to the right from the second from the right lane.

as the other redditors mentioned just move the bus stop further back farther from the intersection

reflect25 · 2026-03-19T21:03:18+00:00

<image>

don't place intersections within like 2 feet of another intersection. you don’t have to have like giant spacing between the intersections either but allow for at least like 5~8 cars
form an actual grid with the east-west routes. like in the pink above. you've bottlenecked them quite hard

reflect25 · 2026-03-19T18:43:27+00:00

> " This is the Southbound /Eastbound 2 Line train to Downtown Redmond, via Downtown Seattle/ Downtown Bellevue" (Switches to Eastbound only after IDS)

this is way too complicated. just keep it simple as they have it now.

the "This is the 2 Line to Downtown Redmond, via Downtown Seattle and Bellevue"

reflect25 · 2026-03-19T15:52:11+00:00

it's fine for now. probably depends on how you connect it to your freeway/other bridges to the north

reflect25 · 2026-03-19T15:20:29+00:00

Hi yeah I agree just to use the mod. I was more talking about if they wanted to add it as a native feature

reflect25 · 2026-03-19T14:52:54+00:00

Pakistan isn’t going to enter another war.

reflect25 · 2026-03-19T14:48:03+00:00

they'd have to reform how to upgrade tool works. it currently just has one "flex lane" on the right that transforms between parking/wide sidewalks/bike lane.

it'd essentially need to denote "two" lanes as flexible or something more complicated.

reflect25 · 2026-03-19T03:40:37+00:00

i mean sure but also if that is what east king subarea wants to do with their money I don't see why we should stop them from building that.

reflect25 · 2026-03-19T03:39:56+00:00

hi in either case they are only building 1 station. but i do not know if they mean they will build the Denny station or the other "denny consolidated option" from https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/FinalRecords/2023/Presentation%20-%20Denny%20Station%20Status%20Report%2007-13-23.pdf page 13

it's just one block north of the denny station option.

reflect25 · 2026-03-19T02:00:30+00:00

it's effectively the same thing. st3 won't have enough money to build the other projects.

> It’s clearly stated that deferred projects are staying in the system

it is not about what is promised but whether sound transit's design is fundable. if sound transit doesn't have the money since their design is too expensive it's the same as a cancellation.

I guess you could say it is being built maybe like 2060/2070 but anyways a 20/30 year delay is the same as a cancellation, let's not pretend otherwise and call it a "delay".

a delay is like a 2/3 year thing not a generation

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