Route 30 currently winds its way from Seattle Center to a variety of endpoints near Sand Point. At the City of Seattle’s request, Metro is changing the evening and weekend routing:
On evenings after about 6:30 p.m., and all day on weekends, the route currently ends at Magnuson Park and turns around inside the park. The City of Seattle has requested that Metro stop bringing the bus into the park because of concerns about heavier vehicles traveling on park roads, so Metro needs to choose an alternate route in the area.
Metro has identified two possible alternatives for the east end of this route on nights and weekends. In both of these, the routing is the same as the current routing as far east as the Princeton Avenue NE bridge. And with both alternatives, passengers could transfer to Route 75 to travel farther in either direction on Sand Point Way NE.
The 30 will either serve Hawthorne Hills or turn south to serve Laurelhurst and Children’s Hospital. Share your opinion at the website.
Metro’s map needs to be tweaked just a tad. If the options start after the 30 crosses the Princeton bridge, then the blue line shows it entering an endless loop once it starts. There shouldn’t be any blue along NE 55th Street.
the blue option starts (and ends) at the intersection of 40th NE and NE 55th.
The map is correct to have blue along 55th, in order to indicate that you will not have westbound service there.
I see what you are saying. If I had followed the link, it would have been more clear with the two options. But what was quoted above…
Metro has identified two possible alternatives for the east end of this route on nights and weekends. In both of these, the routing is the same as the current routing as far east as the Princeton Avenue NE bridge. And with both alternatives, passengers could transfer to Route 75 to travel farther in either direction on Sand Point Way NE.
didn’t agree with what the map showed. That’s why I thought the blue on 55th was extraneous.
I like how Metro made use of SurveyMonkey. (Note to SurveyMonkey: Market your product under a more businesslike name, and you may get more large customers.)
The same technology could save some time on the stop consolidation comments. Those who just want to punch the “Support” toggle can do so, and save Metro staff the time of having to make determinations of which comments are meant as pro or con.
I like how someone checked the option to allow everyone to view the results. I’ve been following along–Westlake/Queen Anne residents had responded the most, but now it’s Sand Point.
Are these really the only options?
They both are not very good. There is a bunch of dense (and low income) housing on Sandpoint north of 65th. Cutting that off service for a substantial part of the day, and instead route it through Laurelhurst for those odd times, is just wrong. I predict nobody will use the Laurelhurst loop because nobody will know when it actually runs.(plus I am predicting opposition by folks living along 47th Ave NE to having a bus run by their homes)
While the other option keeps serving the southern end of dense housing north of 65th, by being a oneway loop, I assume with a layover at the terminal, effectively cuts westbound service from portions of NE 55th and Sandpoint Wy.
Would be nice if metro could look into additional options to turn the bus around at the terminal. What’s the radius you need to U-turn? Doesn’t Sandpoint Wy provide that at 74th St?
Only if “nobody” knows how to read a schedule.
I think Metro is saying, “Let them take the 75.”
With the lack of decent non-vehicular access to Magnuson, reducing access further makes the already problematic traffic in and out of the park that much worse. The recent “quasi-recreational” Arena Sports facility has brought a significant increase in traffic to the 74th Street entrance (the Metro park entrance point) and the route to the North Shore Recreation Area.
The car-centric stretch of Sand Point Way between NE 65th and NE 74th is a poster child for Shared Streets, an incredibly effective deterrent to more sustainable access to the park from adjacent communities.
As mentioned in earlier posts, there is high density housing (condos, apartments, low-income housing along Sand Point Way north of NE 65th Street. Just because Seattle Parks and Recreation chooses to ignore these groups when making leasing decisions at magnuson doesn’t mean that Metro should as well.
Looking at the width of Sandpoint Way, and the expansion of Children’s, this corridor screams for a streetcar going from the new Ulink station to U. Village , up to Children’s and then onto Manguson
I couldn’t agree more that the UW Link station needs fast, reliable, efficient and attractive transit connectivity to U Village and Children’s Hospital. The UW station will be 6 minutes from Westlake, and both U Village and Children’s are very major trip attractors with parking challenges that employ many thousands of people each. Children’s is poised to about double in size and U Village has been growing continuously, recessions or no. Many hundreds of new apartments are also in the pipeline.
A streetcar would be one option, but today we have no reliable ROW on which to run a bus, streetcar or anything between UW station and U Village. Southbound is the real issue there. Nothing on the table, including a second drawbridge at Montlake, would make a real dent in this problem, but an additional southbound transit lane would do it.
Meanwhile, it’s only 2 miles across Lake Washington from Sand Point to downtown Kirkland. I’ve sometimes wondered if that wouldn’t make for a decent water taxi route some day with connecting transit on both sides. It’s the same distance as the water taxi route across Elliott Bay, which takes 12 minutes. I’ve kayaked it in 25.
That would be a fantastic connection; Husky Stadium/Link light rail/UW Medical Center–U village–Children’s Hospital–Sand Point Magnuson Park.
The Sand Point/Magnuson-University Trolley (SMUT)!
I agree with that! Magnuson Park is a heavily used facility, especially on weekends, and can use more public transportation, not less. And the ‘excuse’ that buses are too heavy for its streets makes no sense at all, this was once a place for AIRPLANES ferevinssake! I would actually like to see the bus layover area inside the park rather than the location it is now ,to encourage ridership — the signal synchronization at the 74th entrance makes crossing the street unsafe for pedestrians.
Of the two options, the North one is the better, at least it serves the 65th street entrance to the park. Children’s does NOT need more service, especally now that the 65 most likely will be stopping there later this year.
I can see it now, one route, four great parks. Golden Gardens-Green Lake-Ravenna Park-Magnuson Park, from Lake to Sound
This is an addendum to my earlier posting. The more I think about it, the more I wonder why both of these suggested routings are so far removed from the daytime routing. Also, I suddenly remember that it wasn’t that long ago buses did not go into the park at 74th and Sand Point Way to turn around on evenings and weekends, they simply made a u-turn from the layover area outside the park. Since this route does not use the longer buses, this seemed an easy maneuver. Why not simply revert to this if the city does not want the buses inside the park?
Both of these options stink.
Why can’t the city repave the terminal loop at Magnuson Park? The 74’s been turning around there at night for forever!
I mean 30!
Although it used to be the 74!
The #8 Ravenna did, for that matter……
“There is a bunch of dense (and low income) housing on Sandpoint north of 65th.”
Dense? Low income? On Sand Point Way??? Where? It all looks like low-density expensive Windemere houses to me. There are a couple apartment buildings and a new condo/apartment, but overall it’s pretty undense. There has been talk about putting low-income housing in Magnuson Park but as far as I know it hasn’t happened. I think it would be a bad place for low-income housing because it’s so isolated and there’s little hope of getting a frequent bus in that area because it’s so undense.
FYI-
There has been low-income housing at Magnuson since 2000.
“The year 2000 marked when the first residents moved into fully-renovated units in former navy barracks. The Family Housing Program includes 30 parents and 70 children. The Single Adult Housing Program houses 41 adults; Youth Housing has 24 young adults and six babies.”
From the Seattle Parks website.
In addition Solid Ground has almost completed another 52 units of low-income housing in the park to open in 2011.
From NE65th Street to NE77th Street there are condos and apartments (high density housing) along Sand Point Way. North of the park, where Sand Point Way narrows down to a two lane road there is single family residential (waterfront) to the east, the B-G Trail on the west side of the road.
OK, I didn’t know about the housing in the park. But a few apartment buildings in a nine-block span do not a high-density neighborhood make.
I looked closer at the apartments on my daily #30 trip yesterday, and there are more of them than I thought because some of them go 3 deep, and there’s another complex on the south side of 65th. What the area really lacks is businesses, which I’m sure we can thank the zoning commission for. Just one 7-11 and a halfhearted sandwich shop.
Well, the north alternative looks better. It covers the 30’s primary service area, and the detour is no worse than a snow route. The additional service on 65th and 40th is essentially none though due to its one-way nature.
The south alternative makes the evening/weekend route considerably different than the daytime route. We’ve already seen this movie with the 74, where the non-peak route gradually diverged so radically from the peak route that the 30 was created. Children’s hospital does not need additional evening-only service. The proposed all-day restructuring of the 65 would serve it better. Even better than that would be an all-45th route (by sending the 44 east at 15th rather than south).
I like the all-45 route idea. Perhaps if we did that, we could even get rid of the useless 25 and reinvest the service hours into other, more productive routes.
We had an all-45th route. The old 30 from SPU to Laurelhurst via Fremont Ave and 45th Street.
Ridership was very weak and it was eliminated in Fall 1998. The Laurelhurst end was replaced with the 25, and the U Dist – SPU section was replaced by the 31.
In this case, all-45th means from Ballard to Children’s. Any bus that went to SPU couldn’t actually have been all-45th…
The problem I have with the 25 is that nearly every conceivable trip one could make on it, you could do in an equal or faster way, either using a different route, or simply walking.
To illustrate just how slow the 25 is, once I was jogging south down the Burke Gilman trail. As I approached the 45th St. overpass, a #25 happened to be going west, up the hill. As I reached the end of my jogging route, around Montlake and 520, the same #25 bus I saw 2 miles back finally passed me as I slowed down to a walk.
(Note: I jog at about an 8 minute mile or so – not super-fast)
The old Route 30 used to be a Ballard-Laurelhurst route with every other trip through-routed from the U. District as Route 40 Sand Point. It did not deviate from 45th. The current routing of the 30 between the U. District and Sand Point was originally the 8 Ravenna and operated along Eastlake and Fairview to downtown (now a version of the 70).
The failure of the old 30 does not mean that an all-45th route is forever doomed. For people in Wallingford, why take the 30 when the (then) 43 was more frequent and a smooth, quiet trolleybus compared to a loud, bumpy diesel? U-Village was smaller then so it didn’t generate as much bus traffic. But if you reroute the 44 to provide frequent service to east 45th, it’s another matter entirely. But it’ll have to wait until Metro is willing to extend the trolley wires, otherwise they’d dieselize the entire route.
Aleks –
Read Kaleci’s response. We’ve been there, done that. Why do we need to try it again?
The 30 Ballard-Laurelhurst operated from the 1940s until the late 1970s. It was replaced by the 43 Ballard – Downtown, and the 30 was adjusted to turn back in Fremont.
And if you want to get really technical, 45th Street ends at Stone Way, so the old 30 SPU-Laurelhurst certainly was an “all 45th route.”
Ridership on the 30 remained weak, and ridership on the Laurelhurst loop was sick and remains so.
Mike Orr –
If you were standing at the curb waiting for a bus to the U Dist pre-1998, would you actually let a lightly loaded 30 go by because it was a diesel in order to wait for a packed from points west 44 to show up?
Come on. Most riders will take the first coach at the curb.
Kaleci’s response came after mine, so forgive me for not having read it. :)
As for why to try it again, I see two reasons:
1. Since the late 1970s, U-Village has become a much bigger demand center. This suggests that the segment east of 15th NE would be less likely to have a drop-off in ridership.
2. In a short time, there will be a train station at 45th and Brooklyn, meaning that the U-District will be a much more interesting transfer point for people from both east and west.
Both of these, plus the inherent legibility benefit from straighter routes, suggest that this route is at least worth considering again.
You might, if you didn’t know that the 30 went to your destination. Or, more likely, you might look at the schedule and go to the bus stop in time to catch the 44.
Aleks – Sorry, I didn’t mean my earlier response to sound as direct as it did.
I believe your points are both valid. However, is extending a heavy hauler route (the 44) down the 45th viaduct to some still to be identified terminal the best solution? I don’t really think so.
There’s a lot of service down to U Village right now – but those routes all wander slowly through the campus. Is it time we abandon on campus service in favor of faster arterial streets? I don’t know. I frequent the U Dist but have never been a UW student, so I don’t have a strong opinion either way.
K H,
No worries. Compared to many recent STB posts, I’d say that we’re staying pretty civil. :)
You make a valid point; if the 44 ain’t broke, why fix it? But what I can say is that I’ve almost never taken a bus to U Village, precisely because it’s so difficult, even though I used to live right on the 44. It’s rather annoying that a trip which would have been a straight line with a car or bike was virtually impossible by bus.
Once the train starts, I believe that much of the 44’s N-S ridership will shift to Link. At that point, it’s no longer a case of fixing something that isn’t broken, but rationalizing a route to better complement Link.
At the end of the day, the complaint I have here is the same complaint I have about bus service in Fremont. Between 34th and 39th, there are four different buses that travel on or across Fremont Ave. Not one of them goes straight. In my ideal world, Fremont would be on two bus routes: the 5 rerouted over the Fremont bridge and along Dexter, and another route from UW Station (once built) along 40th or Pacific to Fremont, then along 36th/Leary to Ballard. One simple N/S route, and one simple E/W route. Instead, a number of trips that should be simple or obvious, and would be easy using any other form of transportation, are tedious and time-consuming by bus.
Legible bus networks are good bus networks. Every twist and turn in a bus route should have a very good justification, and past precedent is not good enough.
“But what I can say is that I’ve almost never taken a bus to U Village, precisely because it’s so difficult”
Exactly. I have rarely gone to U-Village for 25 years because the buses are half-hourly and indirect, and that makes it feel like going to a suburb. It’s more pleasant to shop on the Ave or even Northgate. The various bus routes combined may add up to frequent service but I’m not going to pore through the schedules to find out, especially since they crawl through campus at 20 mph. A large number of riders are UW students going to campus, but a large number of riders aren’t. Any 15-minute bus route going to either Brooklyn or UW stations would be welcome, and it would probably bring more business to U-Village too.
The 25 is there mostly to serve low-ridership areas that fall through the cracks in the rest of the system, especially near Montlake.
With what the 25 costs vs. its ridership, I suspect that it would be cheaper just to give a taxi voucher to anyone who lives within a mile of the route.
While I agree that much of its routing covers areas that are otherwise unaccessible to transit, its ridership is currently weak and has been weak for the 13 years the route, in its current form, has existed.
Can we continue to spend money on such a weak route, when other, much more productive routes, continue to be packed to the gills?
Distance to other routes is only a problem in Laurelhurst. Montlake and especially Lakeview also have topographical issues. (Though to be fair, depending on what form service on 10th takes post-First Hill Streetcar, distance may be an issue on Lakeview as well…)
Morgan –
This is an issue many transit agencies are tackling with declining revenues due to the recession. Do you continue to serve all areas of your taxing district, even if some of the routes are totally unproductive, or do you focus on where the ridership is?
I say, cut the 25 (and the other losers throughout the county) and focus on the heavy haulers.
Judging by your posts, you seem sympathetic to providing coverage for all riders, no matter how unproductive the service is. I am right?
I’m more taking a devil’s advocate position, laying out the political obstacles to cutting the 25.
A general problem with bus service in this area has been that nearly all the service has been oriented specifically towards people heading to or from the university, with very little thought towards people passing through the area around the university to get to somewhere else. This thru-traffic includes a very significant number of trips, for example, Sand Point->downtown and [anywhere in north Seattle]->[anywhere on the eastside in the Bellevue/Kirkland/Redmond area].
At present, the level of service for these thru-trips is very poor, as you have to go through all the stops in the U-district AND transfer AND take a somewhat roundabout route. Travel times of 50 minutes to from Magnuson Park to either downtown or the Evergreen Point bus stop (not include time to walk to the bus stop on the seattle side) is simply not acceptable.
This will become a significantly larger issue when U-link opens in 2016 and people in NE Seattle will want fast, direct connections to it without needing to meander through the streets of the U-district with bus stops on every block.
Don’t worry. Metro will get you there. That ten to fifteen minutes of walking and standing while transfering to Link will be welcome by all the people tired of sitting on the bus since Sand Point. They’ll love the exercise.
But seriously, there will be an elevator from Montlake Blvd up to the pedestrian bridge.
The time to lobby to get the route to serve that elevator and use the *closest* stop to UW Medical Center after the sharper turn onto Pacific Ave is during the last two years before the station opens.
The time to lobby for HOV lanes on 25th Ave NE / Montlake / 23rd Ave E/ /S from Lake City Way down to Mt Baker Station is right now while the Seattle Transit Master Plan is being updated. We need to take it up with the city’s Transit Advisory Board.
I’m not sure how to make continuous HOV lanes happen in the stretch between SR 520 and Pacific since there will be partially-separated inner HOV lanes from SR 520 to Pacific, assuming the second-bascule-bridge impasse gets settled satisfactorily.
As far as the two alternative routes metro is exploring for the 30, why isn’t there a loop up NE 70th Street to 55th AV NE back down to NE 65th Street? 55th AV NE carries the SB 71 and 76 from Wedgwood so there are existing stops on that stretch of 55th AV NE.