Sound Transit rebrands network for future expansions, braces for an uncertain future

When trav­el­ers even­tu­al­ly return to ride Sound Tran­sit’s grow­ing region­al tran­sit sys­tem, at least on the sur­face, things will look a lit­tle different.

By 2021, Cen­tral Link won’t be called what we’ve known it for the past decade. Nei­ther will Sounder North, or South. And the red and blue col­or scheme that Sound Tran­sit said it was going to roll out? That’s total­ly kaput.

Re-imag­ing a long time coming

The first steps to change what we call light rail in our region hap­pened in 2012. Then, the Sound Tran­sit Board of Direc­tors adopt­ed a res­o­lu­tion chang­ing what was then known as Cen­tral Link to the “Red Line” and the even­tu­al Lyn­nwood-Seat­tle-Red­mond light rail the “Blue Line”.

It made sense. As the agency neared com­ple­tion of more light rail expan­sion projects and become the coher­ent region­al trans­porta­tion net­work it was intend­ed to be, their ser­vices will need to fit on a region­al map.

Col­or-based lines were seen as the solu­tion, pro­vid­ing clear nav­i­ga­tion­al guid­ance to locals and tourists alike. How­ev­er, the nam­ing scheme was panned on release last Sep­tem­ber. Com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers expressed seri­ous con­cerns with the “Red Line” moniker, because it sparked painful mem­o­ries of redlin­ing, the his­tor­i­cal prac­tice by hous­ing lenders of deny­ing home financ­ing for minori­ties in cer­tain neighborhoods.

The des­ig­na­tion was par­tic­u­lar­ly upset­ting to the South Seat­tle com­mu­ni­ties, his­tor­i­cal­ly hurt by redlin­ing, that the Red Line ran through.

(If you want to learn more about redlin­ing in Seat­tle, the City of Seat­tle and UW’s Civ­il Rights and Labor His­to­ry Project have infor­ma­tive online resources for you.)

Thus, last Novem­ber, Sound Tran­sit announced they would drop the Red Line des­ig­na­tion and re-think the nam­ing process.

New alphanu­mer­ic scheme more inclu­sive, long-term

Mov­ing away from line names that are just col­ors, Sound Tran­sit is going to move for­ward with an alphanu­mer­ic col­or-cod­ed system.

The agency released a help­ful video visu­al­iz­ing the changes.While com­pli­cat­ed, the scheme has a few clear advan­tages. From the Sound Tran­sit blog:

We want our sys­tem to be intu­itive and easy to use, espe­cial­ly for rid­ers who do not speak or read Eng­lish, who have col­or vision defi­cien­cies, and/or are rid­ing for the first time.

The scheme clear­ly fol­lows the guide­lines the agency set out.

The sim­i­lar col­ors in the scheme do not inter­sect. While both orange, the T Line is in Taco­ma while Stride bus­es are on the East­side. The pink Line 3 will run from West Seat­tle to Everett; pur­ple Line 4 from Kirk­land to Issaquah.

The col­or red is also absent from future line designations.

It was not nec­es­sary, so the agency did without.

ST Express bus routes are not impact­ed by the re-brand­ing, though the future Stride bus rapid tran­sit routes along the I‑405 cor­ri­dor will each have their own shield: S1 (Burien-Belle­vue), S2 (Lyn­nwood-Belle­vue), and S3 (Both­ell-Shore­line).

While the agency has designed the shields for each line, rid­ers will only see four shields soon. Sounder’s N Line and S Lines, as well as Link’s Line 1 (North­gate-Angle Lake) and T Line (Taco­ma) will be brand­ed as such.

In four to five years, how­ev­er, that fig­ure will be dou­bled to eight shields.

The new Line 2 (pre­vi­ous­ly known as the Blue Line, and before that East Link) will stretch from Red­mond to Lyn­nwood. And the three Stride routes will be up and running.

In the South Sound, Line 1 will run far­ther north to Lyn­nwood and south to Fed­er­al Way. The T Line will extend to serve Taco­ma’s Hill­top neighborhood.

We won’t see Line 3 until 2030, when it will run a shut­tle ser­vice between West Seat­tle and down­town. When the Bal­lard Link exten­sion opens (it’s still in the plan­ning stage now), Line 1 will take over and run between Bal­lard and Taco­ma, while Line 3 will replace Line 1’s ser­vice north, end­ing in Everett by 2036.

And by ST3’s com­ple­tion in 2041, Line 4 will open between Kirk­land and Issaquah.

The new line names do make change feel real, don’t they?

Inter­gov­ern­men­tal coop­er­a­tion key to tran­sit’s success

Sound Tran­sit’s new alphanu­mer­ic label­ing scheme under­lines how com­plex our region­al mass tran­sit will become. Look­ing sole­ly at King, Pierce, and Sno­homish coun­ties, the array of options is astounding.

Sound Tran­sit alone will be respon­si­ble for four modes of trans­porta­tion: ST Express bus, Link light rail, Sounder com­muter trains, and Stride bus rapid transit.

King Coun­ty Metro, Pierce Tran­sit, and Com­mu­ni­ty Tran­sit all then have their own bus rapid tran­sit net­works. In the long run, Metro’s RapidRide even antic­i­pates hav­ing twen­ty-six lines — one des­ig­nat­ed by each let­ter of the alphabet.

And of course we have the Seat­tle Cen­ter Mono­rail (which, at long last, inte­grates with ORCA) plus sev­er­al water taxi and ten state fer­ry routes.

Com­mu­ni­cat­ing these options to the pub­lic will not be easy. Analy­ses demon­strate the impor­tance of clear brand­ing to induce ridership.

The log­ic is sim­ple: if it’s too com­pli­cat­ed to ride tran­sit, peo­ple won’t do it.

The oth­er major hur­dle that must be cleared for these new tran­sit projects is the cur­rent pub­lic health emergency.

Local gov­ern­ments nation­wide are scram­bling to under­stand what falling tax rev­enues mean for their futures. Sound Tran­sit is no excep­tion… more than half of its rev­enue comes from a region­al sales tax.

The agency report­ed late last March that in the event of a mild reces­sion, debt capac­i­ty will be exceed­ed in 2032. A severe reces­sion would see agency debt blow past the lim­it in 2029.

We don’t know how bad the eco­nom­ic fall­out from the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic is going to get, but the agen­cy’s debt lim­it is hard and statu­to­ry. Absent assis­tance, project delays are the only way to avoid exceed­ing the cap.

For­tu­nate­ly, ST2 projects won’t be impact­ed seri­ous­ly. In most sce­nar­ios, Link will be able to get to Lyn­nwood, Red­mond, and Fed­er­al Way with­out incident.

But the accel­er­at­ed timetable for the NE 130th St infill sta­tion we high­light­ed ear­li­er in the year? The Sound Tran­sit board might not vote for accel­er­at­ed short-term spend­ing even if it only has min­i­mal impacts on debt capacity.

Con­struc­tion for crit­i­cal ST3 projects like West Seat­tle Link?

Might have to be fund­ed by oth­er means. This uncer­tain­ty is unten­able, espe­cial­ly with the West Seat­tle Bridge closed, maybe permanently.

And this is all just what has ensued from the coro­n­avirus pandemic.

We do not yet know if and how I‑976 will hurt Sound Tran­sit. The ini­tia­tive is on ice at present, but right wing trou­ble­mak­ers like Steve O’Ban are press­ing for it to be adopt­ed any­way, which would make a bad sit­u­a­tion much worse.

Our region can­not afford to delay our invest­ments in tran­sit any longer. Local gov­ern­ments are ham­strung because they can’t give them­selves new rev­enue author­i­ty, so solu­tions will have to come from the state and fed­er­al levels.

Puget Sound and met­ro­pol­i­tan Seat­tle have lagged behind both Van­cou­ver and Port­land areas in high capac­i­ty tran­sit devel­op­ment for too long.

We haven’t had any­where near the infra­struc­ture to show­case with slick maps that show how our region is con­nect­ed by tran­sit… at least, not until now.

That our region­al tran­sit net­work is ready for such a dras­tic facelift is incred­i­bly excit­ing news. Our region has been sore­ly yearn­ing for a strong tran­sit back­bone, and we are get­ting clos­er to hav­ing one. But much work remains to be done.

The past six months have brought almost noth­ing but bad news for mul­ti­modal trans­porta­tion projects around these parts, with the lone bright spot the fed­er­al gov­ern­men­t’s award of funds for Fed­er­al Way Link. Effec­tive and coura­geous lead­er­ship will be need­ed to defend and advance Wash­ing­to­ni­ans’ free­dom of mobil­i­ty dur­ing this piv­otal pres­i­den­tial elec­tion year.