The 628: A Different Kind of Bus

35 Replies to “The 628: A Different Kind of Bus”

1. First suggestion: Modify Metro’s Trip Planner App to include Uber/Lyft/Sidecar/Flywheel-like real time bus location information, reservations, and reservation confirmation. Ideally, you’d receive a notification when your reservation was coming up and when the bus was on it’s way.

   1. +1

   2. Of course, Uber/Lyft/Sidecar are virtually non-existent throughout the route 628 service area.

2. Will cutaway buses under the CDL limit (14 or fewer seats) be used? If so, will Hopelink/Metro be using non-CDL operators, who would presumably be lower paid than their CDL-holding counterparts?

   1. Think of it in the same way that airlines use regional opperators for short hop flights to & from their hubs. In Seattle that would be SkyWest for Delta/ United & Horizon Air for Alaska.

      1. I’m not opposed to using non-CDL operators to the extent permitted by law. My question is if Metro/Hopelink use non-CDL operators.

   2. Does CDL mean union?

      1. It means commercial drivers’ license.

      2. Class D licensing is required for bus opperators including van services.

   3. This will be using something unique. I’m excited, especially since the service is utilizing reverse-peak. When Greyhound raises their fares again (they’re doing a fire sale yak-sea 16-20.50 ew) the schedule will enable me to take the later commuter trip

      1. Hope some things, like the filthy, beaten up bus I had to ride from Sacramento to Eugene.

         And the drivers who would’ve been fired over their passenger-handling skills by the California Department of Corrections. Or any reputable livestock carrier.

         The “ew” part was really accurate.

         Mark Dublin

   4. This service likely would still require a commercial drivers license.

      1. I’m not sure.

         According the to the application* it is preferred that applicants have a CDL with a passenger endorsement but under their ” Licenses, certificates, & other requirements,” it does not state or imply that a CDL is required.

         Therefore, I suspect that possession of a CDL will have priority when being hired but evidently is not required that one be obtained in order to sustain employment.

         So yes, it appears that if their cutaways are 15-passenger capacity or less and since they will have a GVWR of less than 26,000 lbs., then a CDL may not required.

         *link to Hopelink application:

         https://home.eease.adp.com/recruit2/?id=12184261&t=1

3. “Alternative service delivery came out of the various performance audits and improvement measures that Metro undertook during the belt-tightening days of 2009-2014. Providing more flexible transit options will be a big benefit to rural areas and allow for better service at a lower cost.”

   Were these audits and measures done by same contractor who also gave us the service-destroying fare box use in the DSTT, and the kidney ruining loss of bathroom breaks for drivers? Would anybody ever board either an airliner of a motorcycle designed and built by an auditor?

   In grade school, we were also taught always to counter “better and lower” with question: “Than what?” Personal experience with “paratransit” (wish we could’ve had “jump boots” with a “camo” paint job) wasn’t very long, and a long time ago was that to do it right, $140 to $160 an hour could be closer to real than half that.

   Velo’s absolutely right about communications equipment available and useful. But lower-income communities could also require that passengers be given “smart phones” and training to use them. And a reliable, well-trained dispatcher.

   Present barely-modified trucks for vehicles is income discrimination. Hard to board, uncomfortable ride, dangerous blind-spots from the driver’s seat…face it, whatever the size you’re going to have to buy a bus.

   Or two, or more. Remember, whatever dealer price, if you’ve promised service, you’re going to quickly need a replacement for something in the shop. And you’ll also need a reliable mechanic. Also ask And how far is the closest “shop”, in location and response time? And service hours?

   Driving and drivers? Between “alternative” transit and the 106 in the Breda years and the former route around every hillside above Redmond- line-haul is easier. Easier to hit destinations on time, simpler route knowledge, by every measure more routine.

   Around North Ben, a van driver needs to be able to handle unpaved roads and steep driveways in falling snow. They also have to know home addresses, and most of all, individual passengers. Every driver needs serious wheel-chair handling training, since every run could carry more than one ‘chair on same trip. And with current legal ramifications, first aid likely mandatory.

   From two years driving cabs night shift in Detroit, best experience here? Large number of cab drivers with direct experience in places like Ethiopia and Somalia- conditions very similar to proposed service here. As experience, “more” pertinent advice than average consultant, at much “less” cost.

   Mark Dublin

   1. The standard paratransit is at least 15 years obsolete.
      Low-floor and hybrid drivetrain tech advancements are verboten.
      These better transit vans, especially for seniors/disabled, are long overdue upgrades.
      GM & FORD building old paratransit vans like their corporate sponsors don’t care.
      Yeah right, as if.

4. Very interesting. I know someone who lives in Seattle and works in North Bend who will be interested in the reverse commute option. But then I started looking at the details. The 554 is the best bet to get from downtown Seattle to Issaquah (from what I can tell). But the timing is less than idea, unless she is a very early riser. The last bus leaves Issaquah Highlands at 7:23. That is plenty of time to get to North Bend by 9:00 (it arrives well before 8:00). The 554 arrives at Issaquah Highlands around 7:15. That bus leaves downtown around 6:30. So if she can get downtown by 6:30, she can get to North Bend by 8:00 or so. That is about a two hour commute. Even battling rush hour traffic sounds better than that (she can read on the bus, but still). So this leads me to a few questions:

   Why does this bus end the morning run so early? I can understand ending at 9:00 (or even a bit before 9:00) but why 7:30? The first run is before 6:00. If you are willing to wake up and get moving before 6:00, driving is actually pretty stress free, so I don’t understand why this is so geared towards early risers.

   Second, why does the 554 take around 15 minutes to get from Issaquah Transit Center to Issaquah Highlands? Better yet, why does this bus not leave from the transit center? It seems to me that simply serving Issaquah riders will lead to very low ridership, but connecting to the rest of the system will get you a lot more people. The best way to do that is to connect to a stop that is quickly served by other buses, and that would be the transit center (besides, it is a transit center).

   1. “why does the 554 take around 15 minutes to get from Issaquah Transit Center to Issaquah Highlands? Better yet, why does this bus not leave from the transit center”

      Your second question answers the first. The Issaquah TC is in a godawful corner location that is not only three traffic lights away from I-90, but completely across the city from all other Issaquah destinations and residents. The 554 goes through all that mess and makes only one stop at City Hall, but spends 15 minutes doing it. Look at the 554’s map; it’s really something. Then be glad Bellevue Way on the 550 is faster. The 208 makes local stops, although it doesn’t go to the Highlands.

      Does anyone know why the 208 and 554 share common routing in central Issaquah <i.except at the downtown stop, where they’re two blocks apart? You’d think that would be the primary transfer point and they’d share the same stops.

      1. I’m personally of the opinion that the 554 should just operate local service within the city of Issaquah, with regular stops every 1/4 mile. In practice, such stops would have a negligible impact on travel time, as the bus would zoom by most of them. The areas the 554 currently passes by without a stop include a major shopping center, a school, and a residential neighborhood with no alternative local service.

         In theory, such local service could be provided by a Metro-operated shuttle, but given Metro’s horrible track record of providing timed connections, just having the 554 do it is better.

         I have ridden the 554 on weekends, occasionally. Most of the riders are going just to Eastgate, but there are typically at least as many ons and offs in downtown Issaquah as Issaquah Highlands.

         The best hope for improved all-day travel time between downtown and the highlands lies in 2023 with the completion of EastLink. If truncating the 554 could free up enough service hours to split the line into an Issaquah TC/downtown branch and a highlands/Sammamish branch, while still maintaining 30-minute frequency on each branch, then everybody could be happy. Until then, I think we’re best off just sticking with the service pattern we’ve got.

      2. Thanks Mike and asdf2. That makes a lot of sense. I think a flyover stop where SR-900 crosses I-5 would be the ideal solution. That isn’t cheap, but that would be the main convergence spot. That way buses can fan out from there. It would mean that this bus would connect with the rest of the system here. With several buses going there, I would imagine a fairly easy transfer. With a transfer time of ten minutes, that would mean less than an hour from downtown to North Bend in the reverse direction. Not too shabby, really.

         Of course the other alternative would be for this bus to connect at Eastgate. That means an other 5 or 6 miles each direction, but way better connectivity. Why does Metro assume that everyone has all day to ride their buses?

      3. What would connect the Highlands to central Issaquah then?

      4. Presumably some sort of KC Metro route, perhaps a short extension of the 271.

      5. Yeah, what asdf2 said, or at worse, a transfer at the flyover station I mentioned. For example, you could have at least three runs — one bus comes from Seattle, stops at the flyover station, then continues to downtown Issaquah. Another stops at the flyover station and heads out to Lake Sammamish, while a third goes to the flyover station and heads to the Highlands. This will make lot more sense once Link gets to Mercer Island, and these buses spend a lot less time on the freeway (or in downtown Seattle). With reasonable frequency, the transfer doesn’t sound very bad at all, really, and saves folks that are just headed to Link a huge amount of time. But yeah, a local bus could do the job too.

5. This looks really neat. I feel like this thing was really thought out, and thus has a lot more going for it than, say, the failed 504/503 experiment at Pierce Transit. Primarily, the excellent span of service. The last 504 bus leaves Fife at 1:35 (except on Thursdays), making it unacceptable for commuters. Not only does route 628 run quite late given the area service levels (last trip from Issaquah leaves at 9:09 pm), but it’s well timed with express busses from Seattle at Issaquah Highlands. The only thing they probably should have done differently was wait to discontinue route 215 until they launched 628.

   1. IMO, the 503/504 had some challenges from the start. the biggest being the 500 connection was never that great. The 500 was on an hourly headway which made transferring that much more difficult, and the stops in fife were nothing to write home about either. The time I tried it, the o/b 504 stop was around the corner from where the 503 had dropped me off with little indication of where to go to change buses. The 504’s limited service did not help it’s cause, since the route was split with the 501 yet it only covered the middle segment of the route, requiring a transfer to get to or from it, which was marginal at best.

6. I looked at this route from several aspects, and it seems like bidirectional peak is the main thing it provides, and DART in the Highlands which I doubt will be used much. It doesn’t have timed transfers with the 554 or 218, although some 554 pairs have shorter waits (0, 3, 12 minutes), but others just miss each other by 3 minutes. Primary commuting destinations are presumably downtown Seattle, Bellevue College, and the North Bend factory stores. Transferring also requires backtracking in and out of the Highlands, but that’s probably better than slogging to the Issaquah TC. The dial-a-ride doesn’t seem that useful because the Highlands is such a small area, and the lack of timed transfers. But elderly people going from the Highlands housing to the commercial district without transferring might use it. (Although didn’t they put senior housing closest to the commerical district??)

   So this route may have minor benefits but probably not great benefits. I wonders why Metro didn’t consolidate it with the 208 since it shares most of the routing, or whether it will do so in the future. I also wonder why Metro introduced a third type of service in the valley rather than following eitther the 208 model or the SVT model. Why not turn the 208 itself into an SVT-type of service, and merge the 628 into that? Of course, maybe the 208s are full during regular peak.

   PS. I wrote an article in December about my Snoqualmie valley bus trip.

   1. Good point about the consolidation. I think the main benefit here is the express service, which would be easy to integrate with the 208.

   2. My assumption is that Metro is easing into the new service format as a test. By overlaying it on top of the existing 208, it ensures that no one is worse off if, for some reason, it doesn’t work.

      I agree, though, that would seem better to just run the 628 all day (but with less frequency during the off-peak) and kill the 208 altogether.

      It should also be noted that the existing 208 schedule has no coordination with the 554, whatsoever, and that wait times can very wildly from one individual trip to the next. With a 2-hour gap between runs, no one with a schedule to keep has the luxury of shopping around for the one trip each day when the schedule timings happen to work out right.

7. I agree that the DART service around Issaquah Highlands probably won’t be used much. However, the question must be asked that, when it used, what is it going to do to the schedule for everybody else. Ideally, since the bus has to pass by the transit center to get to the flexible service area, it would give people a chance to get off the bus before deviating into the neighborhood. On the other hand, if a random 10% a time, a full busload of people have to pass right by the transit center, meander through neighborhood streets for 10-15 minutes, only to come right back to the transit again, it’s not going to go over well.

   With regards to 554 connections, it’s the peak commute to downtown and the 216/218/219 that really matters. The reverse-direction exists only because the buses would be deadheading that way anyway, so even if it only carries 1-2 passengers, there’s no reason not to make it available.

   Even so, the 628 could be a great way to hike Mt. Si. for people that have a random weekday off work and are willing to get up early. Question – are the route 628 buses equipped with bike racks?

   1. Question – are the route 628 buses equipped with bike racks?

      Let me highlight this question… If they are, then I can see myself using it. Otherwise, probably not.

      1. Ditto. As soon as I saw that schedule I started plotting a June Mt. Si hike, but I’d probably need a bike rack to make it work.

8. But… on this being a “different kind of bus”… isn’t this really just a peak-only DART route?

9. I wonder if it would possible to take things one step further and operate the 628 during the midday with vanpool vans. Lower per-trip cost directly translating to more trips, and during the midday, a 10-person passenger van would probably provide plenty of capacity for a route like this. Perhaps there’s even a vanpool van already being used for peak-hour commute trips to Issaquah that could be also used for this purpose.

10. Pingback: February Service Change Details

11. Metro’s alert brings up the point that it’s not symmetrical bidirectional: “Run westbound in the morning, from North Bend, Snoqualmie, Snoqualmie Ridge, and Issaquah Highlands (including the flexible service area in Issaquah Highlands); then become an express route on Interstate 90 from Issaquah Highlands to North Bend.
    Run eastbound in the afternoon, from the Issaquah Highlands Park-and-Ride and flexible service area to Snoqualmie Ridge, Snoqualmie, and North Bend; then become an express route on Interstate 90 from North Bend to Issaquah Highlands.” In other words, it makes intermediate stops only in the traditional commute direction. So that’s another difference from the 208.

12. The best thing about this is that it’s proof positive that comprehensive, independent performance audits are a good thing, for without these audits – which many were pooh-poohing – this wonderful, common-sense idea wouldn’t come to light.

    Imagine if all of the major transit agencies in the region were required to have periodic comprehensive, independent performance audits and had minimum standards for transparency. We might find more diamonds in the rough like this one and avoid what happened at Island Transit last summer (big service cuts on short notice). We’d also keep fares down and have money that could be plowed back into improving the rider experience.

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