The Design Refinements and Transit Connections Draft Recommendations Report was released to the public on Monday along with the white papers explaining how the ESSB 6392 Workgroup’s Technical Coordination Team came to their conclusions on each aspect. The final version of the report along with public comments will be submitted to the Governor and the Legislature on October 1. The public comment period runs from September 13 through September 24.
You can view the report, white papers and submit your comments on the ESSB 6392 Workgroup’s home page.
A few thoughts:
The pedestrian overcrossing at the UW station is a definite improvement over the at-grade crossing, for everyone. Jaywalking can be discouraged with good design.
That said, I remain unimpressed with the plans in the UW triangle area. For $4.65 billion it seems like there ought to be a way you can get off a bus from Redmond right in front of the rail station entrance. If we need to construct a grade-separated ramp or something, that’s small potatoes compared with the rest of U Link + SR 520. Is it really impossible?
The southbound bus stop in the Montlake lid area (for routes 25, 43, 48) is three busy, signalized street crossings away from the westbound off, just like today. You have to cross the HOV ramps, then Lake Washington Blvd., then Montlake Blvd. There’s got to be a better way. Isn’t there a pedestrian tunnel under Montlake Blvd. here? If so, why can’t we have zero street crossings for the westbound-to-southbound transfer? Are cars the #1 priority in this area?
Nobody is addressing transit and HOV mobility to the north up Montlake Blvd. towards University Village, Children’s Hospital, and NE Seattle neighborhoods. Northbound is fine, but southbound a huge daily backup will remain, with or without a second drawbridge. A southbound HOV or transit lane would be cheap and easy to build, and could be used by emergency vehicles as well as shuttles and buses. I think that lane ought to be the very first thing we build in the area. It would be super useful from day one.
As for getting off of the bus in front of the rail station, their ridership projections showed the Medical Center traffic greatly eclipsing the rail station traffic. They’re not willing to put more than one stop in the triangle area, so it’s a choice for the one with higher traffic over the one with lower.
And yes, the Montlake lid connections to local buses for Eastlake, Capitol Hill, and the Central District are really lousy. Today these riders get a transfer to any cross-lake bus; with this plan they only get a transfer to cross-lake buses to/from the U district.
The walk distances at the lid are only an improvement because the current transfers are horrible. The Eastbound to Southbound transfer is horrid now, but we should really take this opportunity to fix it, rather than just accepting a slightly less-horrid kludge. Northbound to Eastbound is fine.
*westbound to southbound
The biggest issue with this plan is that it’s impossible to provide good bus frequency in the off hours from Redmond or Kirkland to both the U-District and downtown Seattle.
Please send in comments to sr520techworkgroup@wsdot.wa.gov urging them to revise the design to incorporate Montlake Flyer Freeway stations. If they are done well, they can provide access to both sides of Montlake Blvd, reducing the number of streets to be crossed.
The Montlake Flyer station provides the following benefits:
– allows higher frequency and longer span of service for Redmond and Kirkland buses to both downtown and U-District
– allows easy transfers to Central District and Capitol Hill buses, not just U-District
– Gives Montlake-area residents express service to downtown Seattle, and makes it easy for people coming from downtown to access the arboretum
– Provides transit service capacity during Husky Stadium events (esp. football games) when Montlake is a parking lot
In addition, given that the second bascule bridge may not be built, and given that the buses will have to merge across conflicting traffic on Montlake Blvd, the Montlake Freeway station will provide more reliable, faster service than buses that will conflict with congestion on Montlake Blvd and Pacific St, and bridge openings.
Please let officials know that what they have designed does not work well for transit on what has been promoted as BRT corridor. sr520techworkgroup@wsdot.wa.gov
About those missing flyer stops. Page 19 of the packet shows two blue rectangles east of the overpass labeled “Transit/HOV direct-access ramp bus stops”. So it looks like you just have to walk a little farther around the corner to get to them? So what’s this about “No flyer stops”?
They’re not flyer stops because the Westbound buses head to UW rather than continuing on 520, and similarly the Eastbound buses come from UW rather than 520.
This means that separate routes are needed to serve UW vs. downtown Seattle. That would mean existing routes to/from the Eastside that use the current flyer stops (e.g. 255 and 545) would need to be duplicated to allow access to either UW or Downtown, but not both. Assuming no new transit funding, this cuts frequencies in half for riders heading to/from the Eastside who currently transfer at the flyer stations.
In the case of ST, the new route 542 is being added for UW Redmond service, but has neither the span nor frequency of service of the 545 as far as I know.
Where is the MT/ST service update, anyway? Last I heard, the fall service change was happening in early October… shouldn’t there be news of it by now?
The ST schedule is available.
ST 542 has no weekend service at all. Weekdays it runs eastbound 6:30am – 10am and again 2:30pm to 6pm. Westbound it is 5:30am – 9am and 3:30pm – 7pm.
Ok, ok, guys, what if.
Weekends, and off-peak, the 545 (or another selected Eastside route) pulls off at Montlake, hits the ramp stop, and gets back on the freeway.
Westbound, it could go almost straight through the intersection to the onramp. Eastbound, it would have to go kittycorner through the interchange to hit the stop at the HOV onramp. It’d hit two traffic lights, but it’s a short hop. I can think of much worse routings in the system now.
Adds quite a few travel minutes to/from Downtown on the off-peak, to be sure. However, it does preserve the local transfer to buses from Eastlake, Capitol Hill, the Central district, and a handful of northern neighborhoods.
It’s damn ugly, but sometimes to make an omelet, you have to kill some people.
Where did you find the ST schedule? I can’t see it anywhere…
The transit guide (9MB PDF) is available here: http://www.soundtransit.org/Documents/pdf/riding/GRTROct10.pdf
The two blue rectangles on p. 17 are stops for buses that connect the UW and the Eastside via 520. The Montlake interchange is (unfortunately, in my opinion) not designed to allow 520 buses traveling between downtown Seattle and the Eastside to stop anywhere in the Montlake area — the intent is for all of those buses to fly through without stopping.
While the need for those stops will decrease with the addition of University Link and additional bus service to the UW, they would still be useful as long as there is bus service up to I-5, especially during evenings and weekends as various folks have pointed out; the removal of stops for buses on the mainline is more of an issue when the service frequency drops.
I suspect that what will really happen is that more bus service will truncate at the UW than currently planned, except one-seat rides will continue in the “traditional commute” from suburban P&R’s to downtown Seattle, taking advantage of the I-5 express lanes. But we have left a drawbridge in the equation for all transit service between 520 and the UW, impacting service reliability.
In the “reverse commute” direction, the I-5 express lanes are no help. Link and local bus service will bring folks to the UW/Montlake area where they can access BRT routes to Kirkland, Redmond and Bellevue — but this hinges somewhat on the quality of the transfer experience at UW, as well as drawbridge operations. The plan has improved with the restoration of an overpass over Montlake Blvd., but a whole lot of pedestrians will still be crossing Pacific St. at grade with this plan. And, in the Montlake lid area, it’s worse — three busy street crossings for westbound to southbound bus transfers, just like today. That sacrifices convenience, safety and traffic flow, all at once.
The three street crossings are even worse than today. Currently you can avoid the crossings if you’re willing to go down the east stairs to the eastbound platform, cross underneath Montlake, then take the west stairs back up. That doesn’t look possible in the new plan.
I have to say it always feels weird to get off a westbound bus and immediately walk to the eastbound platform, though, even if I’m just passing through.
There’s an opportunity to fix that flaw in the plan.
P. 13 of the report refers to a “Connection to an enhanced Bill Dawson Trail via a bicycle/pedestrian-only tunnel under Montlake Boulevard.” The Bill Dawson trail is the one that connects the Montlake Playfield at the south end of Portage Bay to the NOAA Fisheries, under 520.
It’s not entirely clear to me where the ped tunnel surfaces east of Montlake Blvd. Presumably it connects to the north side of the bus stops, where the regional bike trail is. That would make sense and it would be perfect for transit users as well. We have the opportunity to provide a southbound local bus stop on Montlake Blvd. where the tunnel emerges. Bingo — zero street crossings for this transfer.
If 20 feet of the vast Fisheries lawn has to be impacted for this, it seems like a small price to pay, to me, for a lifetime of convenience for transit passengers. I think the real issue is that cars aiming for the ramp are competing for the same space. Are they deemed more important?
The problem is that the right lanes southbound lead to on-ramps for 520 in both directions – first the westbound on-ramp, then the eastbound on-ramp. There is no good path for southbound route 43, 48, and 25 buses through here and it hasn’t been well-designed, and they completely disregarded the needs of transferring bus riders in this design.
The reason for redesigning the interchange to begin with was primarily to improve matters for transit riders, and for pedestrians and bicyclists, some of which are the same people at different times. (General purpose traffic congestion is essentially considered a lost cause, hence the interest in HOV or transit lanes.) If the result isn’t great for transit, then whatever assumptions led to this configuration should be revisited.
If we came up with a plan that had fewer cars passing through there every day, instead of 17,000 more than today, we’d have a much easier time of it in the whole UW / Montlake / Arboretum area. We’ve passed the point of diminishing returns in trying to cram more vehicles through Montlake. More buses, yes, more cars — not good.
A left-side transit island for the southbound local buses, a la 4th & Jackson, would do wonders. It could be shoehorned in just north of 520, if we carved a space out of the current landscaped median. It would have to weave across the HOV/Transit left turn lane there, but weaving across the left lanes isn’t nearly as hard as weaving across the right lanes.
That would do the trick. Unless Montlake Blvd. itself were shifted a lane or so to the east, the southbound transit island would require a strip of the Fisheries lawn. That sounds fine to me, though it’s federal property that also happens to be part of a site considered historic, and the state can’t use eminent domain. Perhaps the feds would be willing to give up a tiny but of land to allow people to access transit service they are helping to fund.
I feel that there should be strong citizen pushback to demand restoration of the complete function of the Montlake Flyer Freeway station – the one that permits routes 255 and 545 to serve Montlake & U-Dist connections, at times when direct U-Dist service isn’t enough to warrant dedicated buses. (The new 542 only runs peak hours Mon-Fri, last bus eastbound 6pm, no Sat-Sun service; the 540 has very little evening and no weekend service).
I don’t think the operating plan is to truncate routes headed for Seattle (255, 545) in the U-District off-peak. If that were the operating plan, then the transfer to Link at Husky stadium would need to be completely redesigned – it is not a good transfer in either direction.
University Link doesn’t really help people who want to go to Kirkland or Redmond
In the evening/weekend hours, all lanes of 520 should flow well, without congestion. It seems like with some adjustments to this layout, buses between downtown and the Eastside could use the general purpose entrance/exit ramps and from the west, serve the exact same bus stops that are already proposed on the lid, and use the direct access ramps to/from the east.
It would be a less of a diversion than what happens today for the eastbound 545 at Microsoft/Overlake. It would mean a couple of signalized intersections in each direction, which seems a small price to pay to save people 20 minutes of exposure on a cold winter night.
er, the westbound ST 545 at Microsoft/Overlake. A 6-7 minute diversion involving eight traffic signals and four left turns, to serve the transit center.
The 545 diversion at Overlake is ridiculous for through-riders – but the connection from the transit center to the 520 stop is so awkward, just like the bus stops are very awkward near the UW/Husky Link station.
I don’t think there is a turn pattern that will let westbound bus continue from the HOV ramp to the westbound on-ramp – I don’t know if there will be curbs that prevent that but that’s possible, too.
Eastbound it could work, though it will be slower than the present flyer station due to the need to make a left turn at a traffic light, followed by a right turn at a traffic light, followed by yet another light at 24th Ave.
It is not as good a design for transit as what exists today, even if what exists today isn’t aesthetically very pleasing. If it had been stated as a requirement from the beginning, I bet WSDOT and consultants could figure out a design that works, within the footprint. And if it cost $100 million, that would only be a little more than 2% of the project budget.
And if there is no second Montlake bridge, which seems entirely possible, then everyone transferring in any direction has their bus subject to Montlake congestion and therefore schedule unreliability.
Westbound they do line up; it’s a bit diagonal, but so long as they put in a light cycle for it, and don’t put a curb in the way it’s a maneuver that can be done.
As-is, southbound traffic at Montlake x the HOV ramp never needs a red light. It probably wouldn’t even have a signal over those lanes, unless they put in a pedestrian crossing.
Eastbound, the zig-zag won’t be so terrible because it’s only being done off peak, when the 542’s not running. The first couple of weekday buses just after six would have the worst time. Under heavy congestion, a bus could be waiting several light cycles to make the left from the offramp. Once it’s through the first light, though, the congestion doesn’t matter as much, it should make it through every remaining light in one cycle.
It does suck. But the other option is no cross-lake connection for local buses from the Central District, Capitol Hill, and Eastlake after 6 PM or on weekends. Maybe they’re making assumptions that people will be diverting to East Link anyway, so why bother with a cross-lake connection at 520. East Link is still a long way off, though (and the connection to Redmond even further).