Wikimedia
Wikimedia

(UPDATE: Metro provided some late additions to the list of reroutes since we first created this post, affecting Routes 2, 3, 4, and 13.)

With 300,000 people expected ($) to descend upon 4th Avenue for Wednesday’s parade, driving to the parade will clearly be a nightmare. Walking is always best for events like these, but bicycling and transit are good choices too. If you bicycle, please be courteous and dismount when approaching large crowds.

Transit will get you there safely, but route detours are extensive. We’ll provide a summary here, but it’s best to check Metro‘s or Sound Transit‘s reroute pages for up to date info.

In general, services will operate normally until approximately 10 a.m., after which buses will neither travel along nor cross 4th Avenue, and service will be reduced on 3rd Avenue as well. To travel within downtown, the transit tunnel will be open.  Tunnel bus routes will operate normally and Link will remain at its rush-hour frequency (7.5 minutes) throughout the day. The following general detours will be in place:

Metro

  • Routes 1, 2 (Queen Anne), 3/4 (Queen Anne) and 13 will have a temporary terminal at 3rd and Virginia.  Those routes will not go further south.
  • Route 2 (Madrona) will have a temporary terminal at 5th and Spring, and will not serve 3rd Avenue. 
  • Late Update: Routes 3/4 (Queen Anne) will miss most of their routes.  They will use Queen Anne Avenue between Queen Anne and downtown, missing all stops along Boston St, Taylor Ave N, and 5th Ave N.  Route 4 will not serve the Nob Hill loop.  Inbound passengers on east Queen Anne should use routes 5 and 16 on Aurora.  Outbound passengers will have to walk from Queen Anne Avenue.
  • Routes 3 and 4 (First Hill/Madrona/Judkins Park) will be rerouted to avoid crossing 4th by using 5th, Terrace and Yesler in both directions.  Buses will not serve all of 3rd.  Outbound buses will serve only the following two stops downtown: 3rd/Marion and northbound 5th at James.
  • Aurora, Dexter, and Westlake routes (5, 16, 26, 28, 40, 358) will serve Lower Queen Anne in both directions, skipping South Lake Union, to avoid crossing 4th Avenue in Belltown.
  • Jackson St routes (7, 14, 36) will terminate in the International District.
  • Route 8 will not serve Lower Queen Anne, but will terminate at 9th/John after serving Denny/Dexter.
  • Pike-Pine routes (10, 11, 43, 47, 49) will not serve downtown west of  7th Avenue, but will live-loop back to Capitol Hill.
  • Route 12 will basically become the First Hill Streetcar for a day, using Broadway, Boren, 12th, and Jackson to terminate in the International District.
  • 4th Avenue South and Airport Way routes (21, 40, 124, 131, 132) will serve 3rd Avenue, but will use Yesler/Terrace/5th in both directions to avoid Pioneer Square and 4th/Jackson.  4th Avenue South routes return to 4th at Royal Brougham.
  • Routes 25 and 66 will have a temporary terminal at Convention Place Station.  Passengers should transfer to Link or tunnel buses to continue to or from downtown.
  • Route 70 will terminate at 6th/Virginia, not serving 3rd Avenue.
  • RapidRide C and D Lines, and Routes 24, 27, 33, 120, and 125, should be unaffected by the event aside from likely delays due to congestion.

Sound Transit

  • Route 512 will live loop southbound on 5th, picking up northbound passengers as it drops off southbound passengers.
  • Outbound routes 522 and 545 will skip most of downtown by using I-5.  Each will only have one outbound stop downtown: the 522 will have a temporary stop at 6th and Pike (across 6th from the regular stop), and the 545 will make its regular stop at 8th and Olive. Inbound, things are much simpler. Route 522 will use 5th Avenue, and inbound Route 545 is unaffected.
  • Routes 554, 577, 578, 590, and 594 will terminate at Stadium Station.  Passengers should use Link or tunnel buses to continue to or from downtown.
  • Link will run every 7.5 minutes all day.
  • North Sounder will add cars on the last two morning trains and first two afternoon trains.
  • South Sounder will have one additional trip, departing Tacoma at 8:30am and arriving in Seattle at 9:30am. The return trip will leave King Street at 2:30pm.

Community Transit’s commuter routes are unaffected.

If you’re coming from further afield, Amtrak Cascades 513 is completely sold out, as is BoltBus from Vancouver and Bellingham. As of this posting, limited seats remain on the 8:30am bus from Portland and the 5:30am Amtrak Thruway bus from Vancouver.

Stay safe and have fun, everyone.

37 Replies to “Getting to the Seahawks Parade”

    1. I say get the 554 in there in the 216/218/219’s spots when they’re not running. The DSTT can handle three more buses per hour without the extra peak buses. It’s dumb to make it end at Stadium station when there’s direct access to the tunnel and that it has capacity for it.

      And better yet, get the 522 and 545 in there from 10 to 2~3 with the remaining of the free time slots.

      1. Putting the 554 in isn’t a bad idea. There’s not enough hybrid coaches to get all of those routes in.

      2. Then use metro buses! I’d rather have metro buses on ST routes than have the route not run at all downtown. Plus wouldn’t they have a lot of hybrid coaches available that only get out for the 550 rush hour? What I would like to see is the 554 in the tunnel only from 10 to 3, not peak.

        1. I think writing an entire new schedule for all of the ST service in a weekday (as that is what it would take), and filling the resulting revised runs, might be a bit too much of a challenge for two business days… The 545 and 522 solution isn’t ideal, but it’s tolerable.

      3. I’m not sure that schedules would really be needed. Let’s be realistic, the buses will be off-schedule past 10am tomorrow so I’m not sure that would make that big of a difference.

      4. Dave – ST has enough hybrids to put the 554 in the tunnel. They run lots of hybrids on 542/545/555/556; they could shift the hybrids to the 554 and use straight diesels on the other routes. Just need to reshuffle the deck.

        1. There are plenty of hybrids to put the 554 by itself in the tunnel. There are not enough to put the 522, 545, and 554 all in the tunnel, even off-peak, at least without a complete rewrite of the weekday schedule.

      5. Also, don’t lose sight of the fact that peak service on Link will be maintained all day on Wednesday (7.5 minutes vs. 10 minutes on a normal mid-day). This significantly reduces the amount of flexibility we have in the tunnel.

      6. Does anybody know if they’re going to use two or three car trains on Link? They already used three car on opening weekend and with the amount of people that are going to ride Link to the parade and transfer from the edge of downtown it might be a wise choice to put three-car trains in service.

        Can anybody take the time to look tomorrow and report back?

      7. Are we talking about the parade day, or every day?

        Moving a bunch of buses into the tunnel for a single day would be a confusing disaster. I don’t see how it could possibly work.

        Long-term, there’s no good reason to put the 545 in the tunnel, for the same reason that the 255 doesn’t belong there. It might make sense to put the 522 in the tunnel, and to through-route it with select 550s, instead of backwards through-routing it with the 545. But that wouldn’t last for very long anyway, and so it’s probably better to keep the 522 on the surface, where it will ultimately stay.

        1. Through-routing of long-distance express or freeway routes is usually a disaster because their arrival times are so unpredictable. That’s why Metro never does it anymore, and why previous examples (such as the old 226/255 through route) worked very poorly. (It was also my main complaint about Bruce’s 48N/271 proposal.) The “reverse through-route” you refer to isn’t a through-route but an interline. Buses lay for time between 522 and 545 trips near Central Base.

      9. Na. We’d have much more capacity in the DSTT if we kicked all the buses out and ran Link at 3 min headways with 4 car trains. That is the future anyhow.

      10. Not to be a party pooper, but ST’s planned eventual minimum peak headway is 4 minutes, for safety reasons.

      11. That 4 minutes is a tentative plan “for now”. Once it actually reaches 4 minutes and they see if it can cope with further expansion, then they might do so. Likewise, they’re reserving the University Link/North Link capacity for peak Lynnwood trains, and that’s why no Ballard spur is being considered. (The missing ventilation shaft is a second reason, but the reason it wasn’t considered essential also comes out of this.) Some in ST are concerned that the north line capacity may eventually get overcrowded, so they’re not about to peel off part of it for a spur. Once Lynnwood is open for a few years and they can see what actual usage is, then they may be willing to do things they won’t consider now.

      12. @Brent,

        Just to be clear, 4 min headways is where ST believes they could operate Link today if they didn’t have to worry about Joint Ops in the DSTT. 4 min headways is a no process change, no additional cap investment level of service that ST is comfortable that they could support tomorrow. They feel they could support 3 mins with some potential training, process, and maybe minor systems investment. Going below 3 mins would require additional invest, in addition to more operational experience at low headways.

        Stated another way, 4 min vs. 7.5 min is a measure of the operational inefficiency that Joint Ops is forcing on Link. Essentially ST could nearly double both capacity and service frequency on Link tomorrow if Joint Ops went away.

  3. Sounds like I might actually go Downtown tomorrow, not to check out the parade but how busy the DSTT and Link will be. I’m sure everything in the tunnel will be SRO most of the day shuffling people in Downtown.

  4. They were saying 500,000 now. I wonder how many of those are people who are downtown anyway, and how many are people showing up just for this. What’s the most people who’ve ever been downtown?

  5. And please, people, dress for the occasion! Wednesday will NOT be the day for shorts and flip-flops and tees. Bundle your selves and your loved ones of all ages. Hypothermia? No thank you.

  6. Most of the trolley routes seem to be routed to stay where there’s trolley wire, yet the 3/4S reroute clearly doesn’t, as far as I know…

    1. Several of the reroutes travel where there is no trolley wire.
      – The 2S uses 5th Ave between Seneca and Spring – no wire there.
      – The 3S/4S use several streets with no wire.
      – The 7/14/36 are in all likelihood dieselized, because if they remain electrified they will have to go all the way to–and through–Atlantic Base to turn around.
      – The 70 uses 6th between Stewart and Virginia where there is no wire.

      2. Sure makes me wish we had the new trolleys with APUs already. Most of the reroutes wouldn’t be a problem or could be minimized if we had even a minor off-wire capability.

      3. Lloyd: You may be right. The trolley routes, so far, are operating with trolley equipment. It may be that they will substitute some diesel coaches at the end of peak hour.

  7. “With 300,000 people expected ($) to descend upon 4th Avenue for Wednesday’s parade, driving to the parade will clearly be a nightmare. Walking is always best for events like these …”

    Walking to the event is best? Unrealistic. 500,000 people from neighboring counties and states will be attending this parade. For most attendees, driving is the only option. Considering large families will be coming en masse, public transit will be prohibitively expensive. 10 people x $2.25 bus fare x 2 vs 10 people + some gas and parking money. The SUV wins in this situation. Besides, like I said, the majority of people will be coming in from too far away to avail themselves to mass transit.

    For locals, who will be in the minority of people lining the parade route, yes, public transit is probably best option, provided their group is very small.

    2. If your hypothetical group of 10 can’t afford the bus, they’ll be taking a nice long walk to the parade from whatever parking they can find in their price range.

    3. Sam, it’s your assumptions that are unrealistic.

      – Most of the 500,000 won’t be coming from neighboring counties and states. In fact, many of them will already be downtown for work.

      – Most large families don’t have 10 members these days. And the youngsters are eligible for reduced or no fare.

      – Most SUVs don’t seat 10 people.

      Let us know closer to 10:00 how many free spaces show up on ePark.

  8. Weird site this AM to see people paying cash on the 255! Lots of teens and families and lots and lots of blue and green ;). The bus was standing room only at 6:45 AM as it crossed the lake.

    1. People have less team spirit in the north end, apparently. My 306 at 6:40 this morning had just a few parade-goers on it, and was otherwise stuffed with the normal commuters.

    2. Call me crazy, but standing in 25 degree weather from 7:30am for a parade that starts at 11:30 doesn’t sound attractive.

    1. Makes me wonder what the maximum train length that King St (or other Sounder stations) can accommodate? In future events like this, could we swap out cars from the 5am runs and run super-long 8am-9am trains?

  10. Few notes to some of this:

    -Its possible we do have enough hybrids for 554 service, but the operators must be qualified (and willing). Can’t just force them to go into the tunnel if they don’t want to, or are not qualified. Warranting a staff change is unreasonable in the short time provided.

    -We can not turn 3+ car Link trains around in the Pine St stub just yet. We need the capacity thru the tunnel, so the Stadium turn around idea isn’t the best either.

    -Some Sounder platforms are only long enough for 7 cars, the current configurations in use.

    -There was a plan to diesel some trolley routes around 10. Jackson routes are indeed laying over at the base.

    -If you ride a 66 or 25 to CPS, catch a bus, there will be no Link to catch as the main article mentions.

    -Finally, the hair-brained idea of a parade on a weekday is the fail here. We have very few extra buses available at peak to help with, as well as workforce. Why it couldn’t wait until Saturday? Who knows, but thats the real fail here.

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