Tacoma’s unfortunate geography makes transit difficult to serve. The city is fairly low-density, but zoning can fix this. It’s dense enough to support Link.
Problem 1: Bad bus routes
If you want to go from the St. Joseph Medical Center to the Tacoma Dome, the new transit center for the South Sound, the bus takes over half an hour without a forced transfer, driving takes 9 minutes, and the distance is only a mile. This is insane. Pierce Transit needs to design its routes to be more user-friendly, increase average speed, and optimize routes. If the Tacoma Dome Station will be the transit center for Tacoma, it needs to be easy to access from across the city. It is not.
Problem 2: Tacoma Dome had bad land use
There is an even bigger problem which is there is very poor land use around the Tacoma Dome. It is a very low density area, not much else to do, and sandwiched next to two freeways. This means it will not be a very useful station by itself.
Solution:
Turn WA-509 into the new track for Link and connect it with Tacoma Rail via Jefferson Ave. Build a new train station for Tacoma with Link, Cascades, and Sounder stopping at Union Station in downtown Tacoma. Use Union Station for its original purpose. Abandon I-705 and create a new Union Station on top of where I-705 used to be. This will be far more useful than Tacoma Dome. Close Pacific Ave to cars and will be the heart of Pierce Transit’s bus service, running to the county.
Eliminate surface parking lots and zone all abandoned lots within a mile of downtown Tacoma as mixed-use. This will do more to alleviate increasing housing costs than anything else you can do.
This will provide better, faster transit to everyone in the South Sound. The train station will be far more useful, and being right next to the University of Washington campus will be very useful. The easy transfer between the University, frequent local trains, and frequent regional trains will make downtown Tacoma one of the best places to live in the United States.