Seattle, WA

Op-Ed: Seattle Monorail Should Honor Transfers, Be Treated Like Real Transit » The Urbanist

Published

4 months ago

December 11, 2025

Op-Ed: Seattle Monorail Should Honor Transfers, Be Treated Like Real Transit » The Urbanist

The Seattle Monorail has connected the Westlake Center and Seattle Center since 1962, but rising fares could sap local ridership. (Doug Trumm)

Seattle landmarks are woven into the city’s identity: the Space Needle, Gas Works Park, Pike Place Market, Humpy the Salmon. They’re playful, iconic, and accessible to locals and visitors alike. The monorail should belong in that same category. It is a piece of transportation infrastructure history that helps residents move through the city and remark on times gone by. Instead, it is becoming a premium attraction aimed at visitors, rather than a practical option for everyday riders.

Fresh off hiking fares on the nearly-one-mile-long monorail to $4.00, Seattle Monorail Services is getting rid of transfer credits to other transit services in a blow to riders. In early December, ORCA informed riders that starting January 1, 2026, monorail fares paid with ORCA E-purse will no longer receive the two-hour transfer credit. Every ride will require full payment, even if the rider tapped onto another service minutes earlier.

For transit users who rely on transfers to move through the city, this is a step backward. It is also a policy decision that treats the monorail as an exception to regional transit norms — or perhaps not a service intended for use by locals, at all.

Taking the 1 Line from Lynnwood and transferring to the monorail to attend Pride, Seattle Eats, or any number of other events in Seattle Center just jumped from $4 per person to $7 per person. Fortunately, many Climate Pledge Arena events come with monorail cost bundled in the ticket cost.

History of the Seattle Monorail

Seattle’s monorail began as a showpiece, built in 1962 for the Century 21 World’s Fair. The idea wasn’t to serve commuters, but rather to dazzle visitors and move crowds between downtown and the fairgrounds. For more dazzling during the World’s Fair, Seattle Center had rollercoasters, which I, for one, am in favor of bringing back.

The monorail system worked as millions rode it in its first year, and the sleek elevated trains helped cement the city’s Jet Age identity. But the system was never expanded, and the short two-stop alignment was left behind as a novelty once the fair ended.

Seattle actually tried to scale that vision into real transit. In 1968 and 1970, voters were asked to approve the Forward Thrust plan, a regional rapid transit system combining tunnels, elevated lines, and stations across the city. Both measures earned a majority, but Washington law required 60% voter approval to issue bonds. The transit proposals failed, and the federal funds earmarked for Seattle were redirected to Atlanta (where only a simple 50% majority vote was required), funds that ultimately seeded MARTA.

Meanwhile, Seattle spent decades without rapid transit, and the monorail became a relic of a future that never materialized. Fortunately, Seattle eventually invested in light rail and continues to do so despite financial hurdles.

But before light rail buildout, Seattle made one more attempt to turn the monorail into a network. From the late 1990s through the mid-2000s, voters backed the Seattle Popular Monorail Authority, which pursued the elevated “Green Line” from Ballard through Downtown to West Seattle. The citizen-led program struggled with escalating costs, uncertain financing models, and political backlash.

After five public votes, the project was dissolved in 2005 without breaking ground. What remained was the original 0.9-mile segment. Still iconic, still beloved by tourists, but functionally unchanged since the Eisenhower era.

Recent fare hike

In 2024, the City and the contracted operator of the monorail announced another round of fare increases. Adult fares rose from $3.50 to $4.00, a 14% jump in a single adjustment.

The monorail fare hike was much steeper than those on other transit services in the region. King County Metro buses moved from $2.75 to $3.00, a 9% increase. Sound Transit’s Link light rail standardized fares at $3.00 regardless of trip distance, in a win for long-distance commuters. Even in larger cities with higher living costs, like New York and San Francisco, transit fares remain lower at around $2.85–$2.90 for metro service. The monorail is now one of the most expensive local transit rides per mile in the country.

For many riders, fare increases alone would be frustrating but manageable. Seattle transit often requires combining services: a bus from a neighborhood, a train downtown, then the monorail to a shift at Seattle Center or an event at Climate Pledge Arena. The regional ORCA card system has long made this a possibility. Riders are given a two-hour transfer window so multiple trips are counted as part of the same journey rather than priced separately.

That saving grace is about to end with the end of monorail transfer credits in 2026.

The monorail has always been an unusual piece of infrastructure. The city owns the physical system, but operations are handled by a private contractor. That arrangement gives the operator strong incentives to raise revenue, while riders are left without the protections and policies that apply to publicly-run transit service.

The argument for ending transfer credits is that monorail operating costs have risen, and maintenance is essential to preserving a historic system. That is a reasonable concern. Transit infrastructure requires investment, but charging riders twice within two hours, once for a bus or train and again for the monorail, does not preserve the system; it discourages the very people who use it most consistently. The monorail should not be the transfer exception.

Ridership rebound

“But Sam hardly anyone takes the monorail anyway. Why does it matter?” I hear you say. Despite its short route and just two stops, the monorail sees real usage. The Seattle Times reported that the monorail hit its highest ridership in over a decade in early 2023. Buoyed by Seattle Kraken hockey fans, the monorail recorded 533,000 rides in the first quarter of 2023, 150,000 more than during the same period in 2022, and over 100,000 more than in the same four months of 2019. That’s about 4,000 rides per day.

In 2023, the monorail carried nearly 2.1 million passengers and in 2024 approached 2.2 million trips, offering a strong indication that, given the right circumstances, the monorail serves a concrete transit need, not just occasional tourists.

Admittedly, other transit lines get far more ridership. In 2024, the region’s six ORCA transit agencies delivered about 151 million trips, up from roughly 134 million in 2023, a 12% increase. Within that total, Sound Transit alone logged 41.5 million trips in 2024, up by more than 4 million from 2023 (about an 11% year-over-year increase).

The Link light rail system operated by Sound Transit carried 30.8 million passengers in 2024 and averaged about 90,050 weekday riders system-wide. Recent months have seen ridership climb even higher: as of May 2025, Link weekday boardings exceeded 112,000, a 23% increase over May 2024.

For the monorail, much of that boost came from event traffic. With the arrival of the Seattle Kraken hockey franchise and the rebound in concert and arena events at Climate Pledge Arena after the 2020 pandemic, a notable portion of fans used the monorail (or other transit) to avoid heavy traffic and gridlock around Seattle Center. Now, with a new Professional Women’s Hockey League hockey team and the FIFA World Cup on the horizon the entire city’s infrastructure needs to be ready, with transit running at peak efficiency to handle the load. Mega events act as a canary in a coal mine, stress testing our transportation network.

But the monorail’s renewed popularity and potential to help shoulder the load during World Cup games doesn’t mean its pricing should shift even further toward tourists. If anything, high ridership underscores its value as part of a functioning public-transport network.

Possible solutions

Unlike most transit systems in Washington, the Seattle Center Monorail is not a drain on the public purse. The monorail’s operations are uniquely funded through fare revenue rather than taxpayer subsidies, and even returns money to the City of Seattle annually under a concessions agreement. That revenue covers day-to-day operations, and equipment upgrades, an almost unheard-of arrangement in U.S. transit.

But the monorail’s success doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Its elevated track and supporting pylons occupy the public right-of-way along 5th Avenue and Belltown corridors, forming a permanent footprint above some of the city’s most heavily used streets. Riders may not feel it, but the system relies on the city’s public infrastructure and airspace to operate.

Seattle’s broader goals like reducing car dependency, cutting emissions, and encouraging public transit depend on regional coordination. Breaking fare integration works in the opposite direction. If the monorail is truly a civic asset, it should align with the rest of the city’s transportation policies.

There are realistic solutions. The City of Seattle can require that the monorail restore ORCA transfer credit as a condition of its operating agreement. The City can tie future fare increases to best practices other agencies typically follow, such as conducting public outreach, publishing a cost-benefit analysis noting ridership impacts, and providing a public forum to debate the tradeoffs.

Most importantly, Seattle leaders can treat the monorail as part of the transit network rather than an isolated, revenue-dependent attraction. None of these changes require a huge funding infusion or an expansion of the system (even if I think it would be cool if they expanded the monorail). They simply require prioritizing residents over ticket revenue.

I ride the monorail more than most living in Lower Queen Anne/Uptown. It avoids traffic, provides a distinct view of the city, and remains one of Seattle’s most recognizable transit experiences. It should not be reserved for tourists or special occasions. Public transportation should be priced to serve the public. If it brings joy while doing so, that is even better.

Samuel Ross

Samuel Ross is a Seattle based public servant, returned Peace Corps volunteer, and self-described nerd. He works to promote sustainable development backed by mixed-method research. All opinions expressed are his alone and do not reflect attitudes of any organizations he is affiliated with.

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Seattle, WA

The Man Behind Saint Bread, the Wayland Mill, and Tivoli

Published

4 hours ago

March 30, 2026

Press Room

The Man Behind Saint Bread, the Wayland Mill, and Tivoli

Yasuaki Saito often hides in plain sight at his restaurants.

Yasuaki Saito’s restaurants are more famous than he is. Saint Bread, his University District waterfront bakery, was called one of the country’s best bakeries by The New York Times and got longlisted for the James Beard Awards last year. This year the Wayland Mill, his Japanese-inspired all-day café and restaurant in Wallingford, is up for the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant. If you’ve eaten at Saito’s restaurants, you may have unknowingly met the shaggy-headed fortysomething when he greeted you at his Fremont pizzeria, Tivoli, or made your coffee at Saint Bread.

Saito has a way of fading into the background. He resembles a kind-eyed roadie who’s happy to lend you his dog-eared copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The kind of guy who, in a notoriously potty-mouthed profession, will respond to accidentally breaking a plate by exclaiming, “Biscuits and gravy!”

He doesn’t curse in anger, Saito says, because he doesn’t want to demonstrate to his team that that’s how you deal with challenges and mistakes. “He is so intentional and really believes in everything that he does,” says chef Sam Smith, who worked with Saito in Portland and consulted on Saint Bread.

When the Wayland Mill opened, Saito spent a lot of time working the register to set the standard for how he wanted guests to be greeted. He often hires people based not on skill level, but on how much they care about hospitality. It’s all part of a formula that has made him one of the most successful Seattle restaurateurs of the past decade.

Saito’s low-key version of leadership shapes his restaurants.

Saito grew up hanging out in the St. Louis teppanyaki restaurant his Japanese immigrant father owned. From age 7, Saito loved the communal, bustling vibe and always wanted to work in restaurants.

It didn’t actually happen until he burned out after a decade working at Borders, quit his job, and wound up helping some friends open the era-defining, now-classic Nopa in San Francisco. In 2014, Saito and his wife moved to Seattle, where he took a job managing the London Plane. Then still relatively new, the ambitious café, bakery, and flower shop in Pioneer Square owned by restaurateur Matt Dillon and florist Katherine Anderson was the ideal landing spot for someone with Saito’s wide-ranging interests.

“He has so much energy and also expertise in so many different things,” says Cassie Woolhiser, who has worked for Saito off and on in various roles for more than a decade. “Like calibrating an espresso machine, but also writing poetry and talking about humanism and how it affects his day-to-day work.”

In 2018, Anderson and Dillon brought Saito on as a partner in London Plane. The following year, he bought Post Alley Pizza, near Pike Place Market, with his longtime coworker Andrew Gregory. They didn’t announce the ownership change publicly, but stealthily reinvented the hole-in-the-wall slice shop, making pies with 24-hour leavened dough and orienting specials around seasonal produce. That transformation would set the tone for Saito’s future ventures: understated but quietly innovative.

Tivoli serves the same pizza as Post Alley, with a few extras.

The London Plane closed in late 2022 when Saito and Anderson declined to renew the lease. By then, Saito had opened Saint Bread, which retains some of that maximalist spirit. It’s a bakery but also a brunch restaurant where the food gleefully borrows from Japan and Scandinavia; an omelet comes topped with pickled ginger and fishy bonito flakes, an egg sandwich on sweet melonpan instead of a roll. In the warmer months, Saint Bread hosts a cocktail stand (Heave Ho) and a wood-fired food cart (Hinoki) in the unassuming space—a repurposed boathouse and a gravel lot—that manages to be so many things at once.

Saito followed up Saint Bread with Tivoli in 2023, which anchors its menu on the same style of pizza as Post Alley, but adds dishes like a Caesar salad livened up with chicories and chilled pistachio noodles. Then, with last year’s the Wayland Mill, he leaned further into the mash-up concept: a coffee shop where you can work while sampling a pastry or a date-night spot where you can get sake and Buffalo chicken karaage. Saito dubbed the food “yoshoku Americana,” borrowing the term for Japanese versions of Western dishes and injecting it with homegrown nostalgia. It’s a cuisine that has been back and forth across the Pacific a few times but is instantly recognizable. “The yoshoku idea is something I grew up really enjoying,” says Saito. “[It] allowed me to be that hafu, that liminal space of being a Japanese American kid, it helped me maybe come to terms more with my upbringing and my heritage.”

Saito and chef Jim McGurk infused their shared Midwestern backgrounds into Tivoli.

Nostalgia is something of a North Star for Saito’s operations, says Woolhiser. Customers likely didn’t grow up eating the gochujang snickerdoodle at Saint Bread, but they probably recall being warmed by a cookie on a chilly fall day. People haven’t had anything like the delicate biscuits slathered in umami-rich miso-chashu gravy at the Wayland Mill, but all the elements of that dish are familiar—diner fare filtered through Saito’s experience, interpreted by baker Ellary Collins and chef Jim McGurk.

Unlike many star restaurateurs, Saito didn’t start out as a chef. He describes his role as an “operator,” someone who has done practically every job in the restaurant but also handles payroll and balances the books. A chef puts together ingredients to make dishes; Saito puts together people to make restaurants.

Making pizza at Saito’s restaurants is just one part of making a guest feel welcome.

“He’s very good at finding great talent, bringing that talent together, and letting people’s talents speak,” says Nicole Sakai, an art director whose agency, Factory North, built the stained-glass window at Saint Bread, among other projects for Saito. He looks for people who have “hospitality in their hearts,” or the Japanese idea of omotenashi, which he roughly defines as “hospitality for the sake of it.” He wants people who understand that baking bread or grilling hamburgers or pulling espresso shots is all in service of making a guest feel welcome. Even people who are exceptional cooks or bakers may not care about that second layer of the work, but Saito needs them to.

It means saying “welcome in” and meaning it, a bit of sincerity you can’t quite describe but feel when you walk in. It means that when a construction worker wanders into the Wayland Mill when it’s closed, Saito will (politely) pause the interview with the journalist he’s conducting to make a coffee. It means that if you say how much you love a cup at the Wayland Mill, as a friend of mine recently did, you may find yourself being given one when you leave.

That hospitality extends beyond paying customers. At the London Plane, people from the neighborhood would wander in from the street in varying degrees of distress. “Sometimes people were destructive, and Yasu had to ask them to leave,” Woolhiser says. “But most of the time, people would just come in and sit down and be like, on their own mental journey, and Yasu would offer them a cup of coffee or ask if they wanted anything.”

The sainted glass window at Saint Bread.

Saito’s philosophy around those interactions is to show up for the world the way that he thinks the world should show up for him. With a glass of water, directions, simply a place to sit for a while. “There’s a version of that help that could actually put that person on a different path,” he says. “And I’m not going to say that I’ve done anything to save anybody’s life or any of those things, but oftentimes it’s small things like that that can help somebody understand that they’re not alone in the world.”

Some guests might notice this spirit of hospitality, all these layers of meaning. Some of them probably don’t, just as some glaze over the custom stained-glass window at Saint Bread. They don’t need to see any individual action, any tangible evidence of Saito’s hard work. His kindness, his attention to detail, the way he cares about so many things, it all seeps into his restaurants. A vibe, something in the air, the way customers feel after a visit. They might not notice it, but it leaves a mark anyway.

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Seattle, WA

Trio helps Ottawa beat Seattle 2-0, spoiling return of Torrent captain Hilary Knight

Published

16 hours ago

March 30, 2026

Press Room

Trio helps Ottawa beat Seattle 2-0, spoiling return of Torrent captain Hilary Knight

SEATTLE (AP) — Sarah Wozniewicz gave Ottawa the lead, rookie Peyton Hemp scored her first goal and Gwyneth Philips posted her first shutout of the season as the Charge blanked Seattle 2-0 on Sunday despite the return of Torrent’s captain Hilary Knight.

Ottawa (6-7-1-9) moved two points in front of the Toronto Sceptres for the fourth and final playoff spot with a match in hand and seven remaining in the regular season.

Seattle Torrent captain, Olympic champion Hilary Knight activated from injured reserve

Wozniewicz was in the right place to bang in a deflection after a shot by Kathryn Reilly hit the skate of a Seattle defender in front of the net at the 9:09 mark of the first period.

Hemp gave the Charge a 2-0 lead when she scored with 1:23 left in the second period. Hemp collected six assists through her first 22 matches.

Seattle began the third period on a two-minute power play after Ottawa forward Brianne Jenner was called for interference in the final second of the second. But Philips was up to the task, finishing with 25 saves.

Corinne Schroeder totaled 27 saves for Seattle (6-1-2-14). She saved a penalty shot by Jenner with 13:58 left to play.

Ottawa came in with a league-high 14 power-play goals but went 0 for 3 against Seattle. The Torrent came up empty on six tries with an extra skater.

Seattle activated Knight from long-term injured reserve before the match. Knight had three goals and seven assists in 14 games before sustaining an injury at the Winter Olympics.

The Charge beat the Torrent for a third straight time following a 4-1 loss in Seattle on Dec. 17.

Ottawa had been the only team without a regulation victory away from its primary home this season.

Up next

Ottawa: Hosts the Toronto Sceptres on Wednesday.
Seattle: Visits the New York Sirens on Saturday.

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Seattle, WA

Where to watch Cleveland Guardians vs. Seattle Mariners: Live stream, start time, TV channel, odds for Sunday, March 29

Published

1 day ago

March 29, 2026

Press Room

Where to watch Cleveland Guardians vs. Seattle Mariners: Live stream, start time, TV channel, odds for Sunday, March 29

The Cleveland Guardians, ranked #1 in the AL Central, face the Seattle Mariners, ranked #4 in the AL West. The Mariners are favored with a moneyline of -170 and a spread of -1.5. Cleveland’s Slade Cecconi (ERA: 4.30) will start against Seattle’s Emerson Hancock (ERA: 4.90).

How to Watch Cleveland Guardians vs Seattle Mariners

Time: 7:20 PM ET / 4:20 PM PT
Where: T-Mobile Park, Seattle, WA

Team Records

Cleveland Guardians: 2-1 (#1 in AL Central)
Seattle Mariners: 1-2 (#4 in AL West)

Odds (via BetMGM)

Spread: Seattle Mariners -1.5
Moneyline: Seattle Mariners -150 / Cleveland Guardians +125

Starting Pitchers

Cleveland Guardians: Slade Cecconi (2025 stats: 7-7, ERA: 4.30, K: 109, WHIP: 1.19, BB: 32)
Seattle Mariners: Emerson Hancock (2025 stats: 4-5, ERA: 4.90, K: 64, WHIP: 1.38, BB: 31)

Weather: 44°F at first pitch

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