News about the route modification on Route 65 — previously reported here — has made its way to the Metro website. An online feedback form is included. Comments are due by April 8th, although the change would not occur before October at the earliest.
The proposed change would add two to three minutes of travel time for customers who travel through the revised area. Route 65 would serve all existing stops along its new routing on NE 55th Street and Sand Point Way NE/NE 45th Street, as well as some new stops along 40th Ave NE (exact locations for these have not been determined).
Metro is considering making this change in order to serve the significant numbers of employees, volunteers, and visitors to Children’s Hospital who live in areas served by Route 65. Also, the businesses and apartments along the revised routing could potentially provide more riders than the single-family homes and cemetery along 35th Avenue NE and NE 45th Place between NE 55th Street and NE 45th Street.
Hmm, one survey response so far. Certainly would make getting to/from Seattle Children’s Hospital better for me, at least as long as they interleaved with MT 75 properly.
Will this improved service to Children’s allow us to transfer the Transit Now partnership hours to the 65, and abolish the egregiously stupid and underperforming route 25?
Route 25 isn’t the worst. See pages 35, 37, and 39 here. Actually now that I look at it, it’s doing worse than I remember. I think 2007 or 2008 was the last one of those reports I did more than glance at.
Oh, I agree, there are certainly a few worse routes, although the number of service hours spent on the 35 is pretty trivial and the 30 down there is a shuttle route. Funnily enough, the 37X is the next-worst performer and it’s through-routed with the 25. It’s almost like Metro knows both of those routes are bulls*** so it married them together.
The 25 is one of those routes for which almost every trip one could conceivably make along it can be more quickly accomplished by another route or (when wait times are taken in account) simply walking.
For these reasons, I agree that the 25 should go, with the money re-invested into running the overcrowded 7x’s later into the evening and reconfiguring the traffic signal timings to allow them to move quickly through the U-district.
There isn’t an easy duplicate for its run through Montlake or Laurelhurst… too bad no one in those areas will ever ride a bus. I used to think of its run on 45th as pretty useful for getting to U-Village, and it still gets closer than the 30 while allowing me to get off closer to my home than the campus routes (except when the 65 is interlined with the 67), but the 65 and 75 are a little more useful to me.
Agreed, frequent service on that section of the 25 would be useful. Last time I went to the U-Villiage, I walked down that hill rather than wait half an hour for the 25. Trolleys would do great on that hill. I guess we’ll just have to wait until U-Link goes in, then maybe that will free up enough hours to intelligently restructure service in the U-District.
Which is gone now; all the previous shuttles now run the full route.
The 30-east actually gets decent ridership during the day, at least 20 people per run most of the time. Evenings are another story. So maybe it should be made into a weekday-daytime route. Of course, if a 65th bus is extended to Magnuson Park, that would take care of people going there, but not those on 55th.
No-one’s knocking the 30, quite the contrary, if you look at pages 30, 33 and 34 you’ll see it’s a middle-of-the-pack performer during the day, high-performing at night, and an unspectacular off-peak performer.
There will also be a new pedestrian/trail connection built (behind the Hartman medical building) that will connect to the intersection at Sand Point Way and 40th Ave NE. It should be convenient for neighbors living in Bryant north of the trail to access the bus stop.
Now is the time for those NIMBYs along 35th to come out in support of moving the route away from their precious front yards.
Well half of the NIMFYs on that segment of 35th are technically dead
The cemetery manager told me that he had to install a fence because people are just dyin’ to get in.
One of the operators once told me that nobody living in the neighborhood was allowed to be buried in that cemetery.
They had to die first.
(true story)
I think htis is a great idea. It not only helps Children’s, but also access to Metropolitan Market. Laurelhurst residents will also appreciate that they can take the bus to the NE library and the Meadowbrook CC and pool.
Has anybody thought how the ULink will affect bus routes? I sure would be nice to get a connection from the Montlake station up to UVillage and Children’s straight along Montlake rather than through the UW.
One reason why I don’t expect this to ever happen anytime soon is the unpredictable traffic on southbound trips along Montlake Boulevard from the U-Village to highway 520. At present, this segment can take anywhere from 2 minutes to 20 minutes in a car.
From a bus planner’s perspective, planning a route through such an area is not preferable because it implies unpredictable wait times for anyone boarding the bus after that area. Even if such a route were to end at the UW station, it would still require longer than normal layovers, leading to increased operating costs and longer headways. (Peak-only express routes where no one is reasonably expected to get on the bus after the delay point are a notable exception to this logic, hence the 243 and Microsoft connector).
Thus, when the transit planners are left with a choice of one routing that can randomly take anywhere from 2-20 minutes and another routing that always takes a consistent 15-20 minutes, transit planners tend to prefer the second route even though its slower in the average case, especially if it puts people going to preferred destinations (such as the UW) a little closer to their final destination.
I realize this totally sucks and will be a significant deterrent to getting people to use Link when the UW station opens in 2016. The only long-term solution here is a BRT system through the corridor that would provide meaningful transit priority with dedicated lanes when necessary. Implementing such a system would require either reducing general-purpose traffic on Montlake to just one lane, or building a busway across the Husky Stadium parking lot, with a tunnel underneath the stadium. Both of these options seem like pipe dreams.
Last I checked, the projects surrounding the UW station project will improve pedestrian connections to Rainier Vista and the buses along Stevens Way.
+ 1000 for transit priority lanes on Montlake Blvd / 25th Ave NE, as well as Sandpoint Way / NE 45th St.
Medical professionals and med students travelling between UW Medical Center and Children’s ought to be able to board on Pacific Ave, not do a hill climb to Stevens Way. And northeast Seattle residents ought to have the most seemless transfer to U-Link as possible to get downtown, not a scenic tour of campus.
Deck chairs.
Until Metro’s willing to offer a straight-though east-west trunk on 45th, with core routes to Wedgwood, Sand Point, etc. connecting off of it — as opposed 150 overlapping routes on 15th and a smattering of crappy crawl-through-campus transfers — this is all about the Titanic’s deck chair placement.
It’s just not even worth debating.
If 2-3 minutes is all that is added, then go ahead and give the line the stop consolidation treatment, and mitigate most of that time. As a former frequent rider of that route, I support the change wholeheartedly, and would gladly give up every other stop on 30th Ave NE, if I still lived there.
Also, I thank Metro most kindly for not having the bus pull inside the Children’s parking lot.
i rode the 65 more than 1,000 times in the past 3 years, and i would not approve the change if i were still living there. as 35th is a fairly steep hill, it is a shame to remove bus service there.
i concur with other commenters that 25 should be canceled, and a reliable route across 45th should replace it. and/or a route that goes from northeast across montlake blvd.
I live in Wedgwood and ride the 65 almost every day. At first I didn’t like the idea of the proposed detour, but realize that in this instance the ‘greater good’ must take precedence.
What I do wish, however, was that there was an easier way to get straight downtown from Wedgwood, which has a large riderbase to justify such, without having to suffer the weird meanderings of the 71. For most of its tail run, this route rattles mostly empty through quiet neighborhoods that are not meant to accommodate buses, especially the long articulated ones.
Well if you can just wait a decade, you’ll have a great ride downtown on Link :-)
I always wondered why the 71 didn’t basically follow the 64’s route making all stops from 85 and 35 to 65 and 15, and let the 65 start in Lake City, come south on 35th to 85 for a timed meet with the 71, then follow the 71’s current route through View ridge to 65 and 40, then left all the way down 40th to Sand Point as is proposed. The 76 could continue on its present routing AM in bound and PM outbound. Admittedly, there’d be a loss of service on 35th between 65th and 5 corners…