I think the VA and ACRS were effective. The 42 wasn’t in Metro’s plan but was reinserted by the council. It serves ACRS during business hours. The VA got exactly what they wanted, retention of the 39. I agree with you that the 42 is a waste.

Interesting feedback on the 8. That’s not my experience, but perhaps you ride at a different hour.

One early Metro plan was to run a Route 109 basically along MLK only, as you suggest. The alternative was having all the 48s run to Rainier Beach, and the latter won decisively.

And yes, ACRS and VA did some lobbying, but it was largely ineffective. I’m also not convinced that the 42 was the route worth saving. The 8, which is supposed to be more predictable than the 48 or 42, isn’t working well at all. There are drive-bys in the morning commuting hours as well as buses running up to 25 minutes late. I’d prefer to see a route entirely dedicated to going up and down MLK as opposed to appending it to the 8.

:mutter:

Obviously, wealthier people are going to have an easier job of organizing campaigns to “save” particular routes. Personally, I agree the 34 should have gone away.

On the other hand, your lamenting of the “politics” of it all implies that there’s some sort of pure, absolutely apolitical solution to the problem. There’s no such thing — just a different, equally political weighting of priorities that gets you a different solution.

Regarding being dismissive, some staff people are more diplomatic than others, but there are lots of ideas that really do deserve to be dismissed out of hand.

As for the commuter/noncommuter weighting, the initial Metro proposal eliminated all express buses from SE Seattle. It was community protests that brought back the 7X and 34.

The 34 makes the case for the politics of it all. It highlights that outreach efforts worked for commuters, a completely different demographic than a lot of SE riders (myself included).

Metro had a massive outreach program that I saw up close. There were at least three mailers sent to every household, dozens of open houses, internet outreach, advertisements in foreign language media, and so on. People will still miss all that, but there’s not much else Metro can do besides knock on each door individually with 7 interpreters in tow.

This depends entirely on who you are. I went to several of those open houses. Staff members were dismissive of people’s ideas, even scoffing and snubbing their noses at them.

Outreach, in my opinion, was not about listening to residents but telling them what was good for them.

That isn’t outreach; it’s a way to defend themselves later by saying, “well we did … “.

Regarding the additional hours to SE: The powers that be could add thousands and thousands of hours, but if it doesn’t meet the needs of the community, they are all for not. Having a pretty graph that says “look, we’re not cutting your hours” doesn’t help a rider who is transit dependent navigate their daily lives.

I think the changes largely benefit commuters, and that’s fine. But then they should just say that.

The 41 and peak express service like the 76, 77, 79, and 316 are the routes most likely to either be eliminated or truncated at the nearest Link station when North Link opens. The CT and ST routes using I-5 to points North will probably be truncated at Northgate as well.

But this is all speculative because we have at least 6 years until U Link opens and 8-10 until North Link opens to Northgate, then Lynnwood 3 years after that.

One way to serve the UW station might be to have routes that cross campus via Stevens Way and Pend Oreille Road go via Pacific St. and Montlake Blvd. instead.

It will be interesting to see if they do something like the Mt. Baker Transit Center near the Brooklyn Station. In theory this might allow the Campus Parkway transfer/layover point to be moved there, though I suspect it will be kept more or less as-is. Some of the routes that don’t currently go near the Brooklyn Station might be routed to it as part of their runs.

The 41 and peak express service is most likely

I wonder what will happen to the Campus Parkway “transit center”. Logically I can see moving it to the stadium, but it would be less convenient for a lot of transfers (anything involving the 30, 49, 31, etc). Maybe they’ll leave it as-is until North Link opens, but then it will still be not-quite-at the Brooklyn station.

With North Link they’ll probably truncate the 71/72/73 at Brooklyn or Roosevelt. Although I don’t see where they’ll be able to park that many buses for layovers.

What other meet-the-train routing could they do, that isn’t already being done to bring people to the UW?

You can really go down the rabbit hole trying to tease this out.

But you know even if you point this out there will still be people convinced their service hours are going to Paul Allen and the North End.