Zortan

King County Metro 2808, a 2004 New Flyer DE60LF, passes through downtown Seattle (5th & Jackson) on the 36 to Othello Station via North Beacon Hill.

I submitted mine over a year ago, received feedback, acted on it, and re-applied a few months later, and have heard nothing back since then.

It means either XE40 or XE60, the lowercase x there just means that it could be either model, or both models.

Yep, I saw one at Bridgeport the other day

Not really. Battery buses require more electricity, more weight and a lot more infrastructure. Trolleys don't hinder the efficiency of any system. In fact, they encourage agencies to offer more frequent service along trolley lines as the infrastructure is already there. And, in the long run trolleys are far cheaper to maintain and keep on the road, since the buses themselves need far less work and the overall infrastructure is less maintenance-heavy than a full network of chargers. It also allows us to take advantage of what we have now, which is a fairly large and effective trolley network.

They are better, but there is likely no physical way to make them as efficient and as safe as trolleybuses. Sure, you can get a better battery, but it'll still weigh more than the tiny backups in the trolleys. Sure, you can make the batteries more efficient, but you can't make them as efficient as directly delivering the power from the grid to the bus. Trolleys may not be the newest technology, but remember that the most effective carbon capture technology is a tree. Newer doesn't mean better in every case.

Construction costs for trolley wires may be higher, but I believe that they have lower maintenance and operational costs than battery-electric once they get built.

It wouldn't really cost much of anything to run the R4 as trolleys, assuming we dieselize the 41. All they'd need to do is purchase a few buses, which isn't that significant, especially considering our aging trolley fleet overall. The XDEs coming off the R4 could pretty easily be put onto the R6 or some other new service.

Or, make the 41 a diesel, considering that it runs every 15 minutes while the R4 is far more frequent, meaning that electrifying the R4 has a much better impact than the 41.

The 5/6 have been diesel yesterday and today

If there isn't some sort of last-minute resolution to this I bet we'll be seeing pretty significant ridership boosts to the 405, 407, 22 and 15...

Pierce Transit 192, wrapped in the Sound Transit Livery, is seen here entering Bellevue Transit Center on Sound Transit route 560E to Bellevue via Sea-Tac Airport.

I spotted both of those 240 blocks today I think. Cool to see it in place, the ridership does warrant it.

That's fair, although I'd still see a 66 frequency increase as more valuable for passengers personally

Connections aren't necessarily a bad thing tho, like sure they can add time but the cost savings from not extending to SkyTrain could just be put towards increasing the 66's frequency, especially with expanding service hours on weekends, etc. instead of extending its length and duplicating an already popular, convenient and successful route IMO