Members of the 1000+ Chinese drill team, the only one of its kind in the US
Members of the 1000+ Chinese drill team, the only one of its kind in the US

Just when you thought it was safe to travel again, the Seafair Torchlight Parade has arrived. Yes, 4th Ave will be closed all evening from 3:30 pm to 10 pm, and 38 34 bus routes will be re-routed. These include routes C, D, E, 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 21, 24, 26, 28, 33, 36, 40, 43, 47, 49, 66, 70, 99, 120, 125, 131, 132, and ST Express routes 512, 522, 545, and 554, 577, 578, and 594.

Metro will also be operating a shuttle every 20 minutes between Nob Hill on Queen Anne, and Queen Anne Ave and Mercer St, by the Seattle Center, from 3:30 pm to midnight, with frequent stops between the termini.

For those wishing to get across the parade route, use this nifty little map of all the accessible tunnel corridors throughout downtown. Westlake Station is my favorite shortcut under 4th Ave street closures. You can grab the fold-out version of this map at Westlake Station.

For the unaware, the Torchlight Parade is a big deal. Thousands of spectators claim spots along the street with fold-up chairs hours before the parade. Over 150,000 apectators are expected to show up. Sounders fans, whose game against the LA Galaxy got moved to Monday night, will be showing up in force as World Cup heroes Clint Dempsey and DeAndre Yedlin serve as Grand Marshalls. Mariners fans will also get to show up this time, as their game today is at 1 pm, instead of the usual 7 pm.

Downtown Seattle isn’t the only location where Seafair will be stressing the public transit system. Renton River Days will impact 10 bus routes serving downtown Renton, including routes F, 101, 105, 106, 107, 148, 169, 240, 908, and 909.

Metro and Sound Transit each have alert services to which you can subscribe.

Addendum: Sound Transit Express routes 512, 577, 578, and 594 are also on re-route until 10:00 pm downtown.

8 Replies to “Torchlight Parade Re-routes and Shuttle from Queen Anne”

  1. All this does it tell you that there will be a re-route. Of course it doesn’t show you what the re-route is.

    1. Metro gave the correct links, difficult-to-follow though they may be. The page you went to is exactly what one should expect in a sentence advertising a subscription alert service.

  2. Anybody know why Metro doesn’t show maps of reroutes? Are the maps a resource-intensive effort? Having a picture would make a lot more sense than “R 3rd Av C N 3rd Av to regular route.”

  3. Also st 512 is rerouted significantly. Riders will note that two additional st 512 “northbound” departures will depart southbound on 5th and Jackson and proceed straight to 45th and I-5.

    St 594 577 and 578 are also rerouted substantially.

    1. My apologies. I forgot to check the routes operated by PT and CT. Metro and ST do not yet act as one.

  4. Unfortunately because I live in a cave I didn’t realize this was happening until just before it started, so I put it on TV.

    For a second I thought Yedlin was wearing a “Seattle Superchronics” hat. Sadly, not.

    Also, they echoed the 4th of July by starting off with a false start on the music (even people that live in a cage know when the 4th of July is… duh!).

    1. I was missing big events too until I broke down and started loading bunches of notifications into my google acct. I will throw a finger of blame at local news shows/sites, which all too often have a “This cool #$%& happened this past weekend!” stories on Monday/Tuesday but often seem to forget to throw up a “This cool #$%& is going to happen this weekend!” story ahead on Thursday/Friday.

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