Metro to Add Service Starting June 6

63 Replies to “Metro to Add Service Starting June 6”

1. Wondering what significant changes for central link are in play?

   also significant changes likely for pierce transit (including new route 4 replaces 410 and 204).

   And our friends up north in community transit are having a lot of off peak service adds including route 271 being extended to everett and Boeing (Boeing peak only) and route 275 being deleted. The big news for ct is SUNDAY SERVICE.

   1. Central Link will gain improved peak headways as the trains start running (without passengers) along the U-Link alignment for testing.

      1. And after SCADA cutover in 2 weeks they should be able to start to mix in a few 3 LRV trains. It will be interesting to see if they start to do this in the June/July timeframe, or if they wait until the start of U-Link thru-testing in August to increase train length.

      2. After the DSTT SCADA cutover, will the entire system be on SCADA, end-to-end? I know that the Beacon Hill tunnel was done in March. Is it correct to assume that all of the at-grade and elevated portions were completed previously, as well as the new track in the U-Link tunnels?

2. So for the “Reliability Relief” routes, we’re just going to have to wait for the schedule to be released before we see the changes? I tried the trip planner metro suggests, but am not seeing changes.

   1. You won’t see many of the changes on the schedule at all; they’ll consist of additional recovery time enabled by putting an additional bus on the route at some times of day, or of peak-hour buses scheduled to have longer to deadhead between trips. If I can get a set of the run cards for the upcoming service change I may be able to puzzle a few of them out.

      1. Thanks David – I’m really curious to see how that’s going to help with the 56/57, since they only run for a few hours in the morning/afternoon. Its so horrid right now, I kept hoping this would mean it gets slightly better and closer to on time, but the little faith I had is gone.

      2. Keep the faith. The 56/57 are well known for having had too much time taken out of the schedule in the 2012 restructure. I’m sure some time will go back in, and trips will also be moved around so that buses have realistic deadhead time in between trips. I’d expect these routes to improve significantly.

      3. Basically if your route is constantly late now by a significant margin and it’s on the list then expect headways to remain the same but for your bus to perform better. Schddules may change slightly. The 180 for example is frequently late but it will have to wait for now.

3. 35-minute headways on the 47 – what was the reason for that again?

   Will the 47 be the only Metro route without clock-face headways?

   1. Not the only route, at least; remember the 219.

   2. The route should use only one coach during midday, and the cycle time of the complete route including layover time is a bit too long for 30 minute headways. You’d be cutting into layover time to get to 30 minutes, or require two coaches with huge layovers.

      1. Thanks for the details. That makes sense.

4. Decouple the RapidRide C/D!

   *gets hauled off by STB security*

   1. This is very likely to happen, just not immediately.

   2. When is the decoupling scheduled to happen? September service change?

      1. It’s not scheduled for September (to my knowledge), but the city keeps saying things that indicate they want it to happen relatively soon. The next opportunities are at the March and September 2016 service changes.

   3. Next March as I recall. I was puzzled when David said “the first of two rounds of new service”, because aren’t there going to be more rounds after that? A lot of the service hours — like a third or half — were reserved for the C/D split and extending the C to SLU.

      1. The split is not included in the interlocal agreement, so all we have for now is occasional hints.

   4. Can we start by decoupling parked cars from the bus lanes? (and cease using the presence of current parking as a lame excuse to not streamline the C Line in the Alaska Junction)

   5. Also, I have to question the wisdom of decoupling the C/D Line, when several more bus routes are about to be kicked out of the tunnel. Have the traffic engineers determined whether it is feasible to add all those extra peak trips on 3rd Ave?

      1. Decoupling the C/D is the closest thing to a bone that can be thrown to Ballard to do anything to improve transit.

         Plus, it’d be nice to have a frequent bus that connects to Amtrak and Boltbus, and the southern half of downtown.

         They caused us to salivate with some initial Prop 1 promises, only to reneg because of (insert excuse here). But hey, Magnolia needs buses too, so they can smile smugly at the empty buses winding through their single family paradise!

         At least we got some additional trips for the 40.

      2. RapidRider, you noticed the massive frequency improvement that will benefit the C/D before the decoupling, right? It’s the biggest improvement for any route in the Prop 1 package. Plus there’s the 44 improvement. Ballard is getting a lot more than “a few additional trips on the 40.”

         Magnolia is getting peak overcrowding relief and a few night trips, and nothing else. I think it’s bizarre to complain about Magnolia getting that when the improvements for Ballard are many times bigger.

      3. 8 minute frequency means that we’ll soon see 3 or even 4 RR D’s bunched together by the time they get to the LQA diversion, after they are delayed coming from West Seattle. What an improvement! Seriously though: the biggest issue with the RR C/D isn’t the frequency, but rather the reliability. And that goes both ways; something that will only be improved by decoupling. No other RapidRide route is coupled, and for good reason.

         The increased 44 is a great improvement, don’t get me wrong. I would expect the improvements to Ballard to be magnitudes larger than Magnolia improvements, due to both population density and ridership.

      4. The C, D, and E are being positioned as the primary north-south workhorses for downtown circulation, as befits their RapidRide features. That will allow other routes to potentially be whittled down or consolidated downtown. Madison BRT is also like that for east-west service, which is why we have to think carefully about whether an all-Madison route and 2-Madison and 49-Madison are really the best for Capitol Hill/First Hill/CD compared to the existing Pine Street trunk.

   6. Why? You’d just be forcing a transfer for people going between Ballard and West Seattle. Who exactly would benefit from that?

      1. Most people. As the buses would be more reliable. Also, West Seattle would have direct service to SLU and Ballard to Pioneer Square.

      2. The through-routed C/D doesn’t serve lower downtown between Union Street and Jackson Street because it’s on the viaduct or future boulevard. The 15 and 18 local used to serve it, but now it requires a transfer. The separated D will restore that service. The C will continue to bypass that area as the 54 and 55 did; West Seattle prefers fast service to midtown rather than than in a one-seat ride to Pioneer Square. Although when the viaduct is replaced by the boulevard, it will have a station down there and become somewhat slower.

5. If or when the 271 is moved out of Medina, perhaps the 246 should be rerouted via NE 8th and 92nd AVE. This would preserve bus service to the heart of Medina. Also, if the 271 is rerouted onto Bellevue Way, then this would avoid having the 246 and the 271 running on parallel streets only 0.3 miles away from each other.

   1. Chinook Middle School is probably the most important destination on the 246, so 92nd couldn’t be used all the way. One idea to expand coverage would be to serve Evergreen Point rather than Yarrow Point, via 24th and Evergreen Point Road. The thing is, you’ll have less ridership the further west you go. Metro once had a DART route connecting Medina to Yarrow Point, Evergreen Point, and BTC. Ridership was pathetic even by the low standards of DART routes; there were zero riders on many trips.

      1. I agree that Chinook is the most important destination on the 246. Moving the 246 from 100th to 92nd would cause the distance from the 246 to Chinook to increase from 1 block to 2 blocks. (There are entrances on the back side of the school facing 96th) Would the extra block of walking cause some teachers and staff to stop using the bus? Also, does anyone know how the possible ridership along 92nd compares to the ridership along the 246’s current routing?

   2. I think the right thing to do is to keep the 246 routing as is (with the extension to Yarrow Point Freeway Station), move the 271 to Bellevue Way (which has a lot more multi-family housing nearby than 84th), and replace lost coverage in Medina with a peak-only van shuttle between downtown Bellevue and Evergreen Point Freeway Station via 8th->92nd->24th->Evergreen Point Road.

      I thought about going one step further and routing the 271 down 112th/108th, but it would miss the area around Bellevue Square and, with 405 in the way, have a much more limited walkshed, in order to save a mere minute or two between Bellevue Transit Center and the U-district.

      The only question mark about Bellevue Way is traffic delays in westbound trips getting on the freeway during the PM peak. However, if during bad traffic, the bus simply stays in the right lane of Bellevue Way across 520 (with all the freeway-bound cars in the left lane), turns right on Northup Way, and backtracks to the 108th Ave. direct access ramp, I think it will get through that mess pretty quickly.

      1. asdf2, I agree with your plan exactly except for the van shuttle. I think Metro’s experience with the 924, and current ridership in Medina on the 271, show that coverage just isn’t needed.

         If it is needed, it’s at just three stops: NE 8th/98th NE, NE 1st/NE 10th at the Bellevue/Clyde Hill/Medina triple point, and NE 12th/84th NE. With the 246 in place the right routing for any additional shuttle would be 8th -> 1st -> 12th -> Evergreen Point Road to Evergreen Point.

      2. In terms of actual ridership, you are right that coverage in Medina is probably not needed. The van shuttle thing was based on the pessimistic assumption that, needed or not, eliminating it completely would be a political impossibility.

6. Background on Route 630 (Mercer Island – First Hill): this route runs from mid-Mercer Island via the North Mercer Island P&R to First Hill (along Boren), then down to 5th, and back to Mercer Island via the ID. Roughly speaking the old 205 without service to UW. Riders are expected from historical 205, 202, and 211 ridership. Funding is from a combination of the Metro Alternative Service program, Mercer Island, and Seattle.

   The most significant service need this meets is the commute to First Hill from the Eastside. Alternatives are inefficient enough to chase many such commuters back into their cars. Whether there is enough demand to sustain direct service – we’ll find out!

   Others who lost the 202’s one-seat commute to downtown may find this useful, if 5th Ave is close enough to their destinations.

   1. That seems a strange use of Alternative Services resources, no?. It would seem to me that doctors who live on M.I. are the target market, a group that could hardly be called disadvantaged, or burdened by being asked to transfer from the 550 to the 3/4/12, or to vanpool.

      1. Bellinghammer, I tend to agree. Metro’s expressed vision for alternative service delivery was to find a way to serve communities that would lose coverage under the Service Guidelines. There’s only one part of Mercer Island that lost coverage entirely last September, and it’s not the part covered by this new route. This is purely a route that will speed up an otherwise slow bus trip.

      2. Most folks who work in a hospital are nurses and other non-MD’s. This is true of the folks I talked with who had been taking the 205. And the actual change in bus commute time was to add about 30 minutes each way for most of them (going from 1-seat to 3-seat ride). You can decide whether that’s a burden or not. At some point a “slow” bus trip becomes a useless one. That’s more or less the point of the emphasis on high frequency.

         Nurses and techs in hospitals typically work shifts that change from day to day – even if only by an hour or two. Vanpooling depends on regular work schedules.

         A reflexive “Mercer Island = Rich” attitude hardens antipathy and mistrust, just as reflexive “Seattle = Portlandia” and “Seattle = Rich Techies” attitudes do. Fair enough to ask hard questions about priorities – for example, is efficient service from Eastside to First Hill a priority compared with other needs? – but caricatures don’t help the conversation.

         David, about the area losing coverage, I believe you are referring to Shorewood and Covenant Shores (203 and 213). Shorewood folks will have access to the 630 on a dial-a-ride basis – the routing is flexible and the service area covers Shorewood.
         (And as it turns out, Covenant Shores provides shuttle service for its residents / employees, so that service had become redundant.)

      3. Jim, in that case, then why are we not getting alternative service for other peak-hour trips that became much slower after the September cuts? There were a fair number of them, and some had much higher ridership than the 205.

      4. David, you have a good point. Perhaps the Alternative Services program should have come with its own “service guidelines.” I don’t mean to argue against other areas’ claims of need for that funding. As it is, though, the town reached out and worked hard to make transit once again a practical solution for a number of residents. If that pans out – enough ridership that the cities of Mercer Island and Seattle continue to fund – then that’s a good thing. Whether in the grand scheme there are other places where Metro’s contribution should have gone I won’t argue one way or the other.

      5. The situation here strikes me as somewhat similar to cross-lake service on 520. There are a bunch of places on the eastside you need to serve and a bunch of places in Seattle, too. It would look nice and clean to build strong intra-eastside lines and strong cross-lake lines connected by transfers, but unfortunately eastside transit demand (unlike general travel demand) is particularly dominated by cross-lake demand (most people with any choice at all drive for their intra-eastside trips because that’s how the eastside was built). So we have lots of different cross-lake stuff…

         … but it actually works fairly well! On 520, especially during rush hour, the ability to mix and match eastside and Seattle destinations at Evergreen Point is really useful. Even well off-peak you can make the most popular cross-lake trips (Bellevue, Redmond, and Kirkland to the U District and Downtown) with either no transfers or one transfer between two frequent services. We’ve been thinking about truncating a lot of I-90 service at Mercer Island post-East Link; maybe we should send some of it to secondary Seattle destinations like First Hill so people can mix and match their cross-lake trips.

7. Rapid Ride Line F just got a lot slower (and we thought that they couldn’t make it any worse). Logan is a fast reliable road, while the route from Renton TC to the Landing via Park Ave is riddled with turns that the bus drivers struggle with as well as more stoplights. I thought the idea of Rapid Ride was a faster trip. I used to just drive the extra mile and park at Boeing up by the Landing because it was faster than parking at the actual transit center and waiting through all of the stoplights on the cumbersome bus.

   1. The good news is the change for RR F is temporary. Southbound trips will return to Logan in September. I assume the change is for construction although I don’t know the exact plans.

      The 167 change is permanent; basically, it will slow down S Renton P&R passengers in exchange for providing commuter service from The Landing to the U-District.

   2. When I saw F added to the southbound Park & 6th stop sign, I thought it was permanent. Maybe they figured out more Boeing office workers than factory workers take transit. But it’s temporary, and only for the southbound buses.

      1. Logan Ave N needs a road rebuild, hence the temporary reroute.

8. What will the added sounder train time slots be in September? Late, Early, or in the middle?

9. I hope the new trolleys start to enter service this summer. Metro has already delayed their introduction once, and the current trolley fleet continues to fail at inopportune times. Last week on consecutive days there were trolley failures during the evening rush on Capitol Hill (including the 43 I was riding that conked out on Olive & Summit). I’m looking forward to more frequent service, but a more reliable trolley fleet will be an appreciated upgrade in its own right.

   1. I heard that the first of the new 40-footers will probably hit the road this upcoming shake-up. Who knows? Maybe this will lead to fewer trolley-free weekends.

10. Route 73 is being shortened to end at QFC, 245 is being changed to Layover at Eastgate P&R, and 246 will layover at Bellevue TC in order to provide operators of all 3 routes better access to comfort stations. More changes like this may happen if comfort stations are hard to come by at current layovers.

    1. If this is the reason (I haven’t heard from Metro yet) then Metro really needs to get its comfort station improvements into gear. It’s not tenable for drivers to have no comfort station access, but these sorts of live-loops are also extremely unfriendly to customers.

       1. What makes them so unfriendly? It seems to me that they’re actually somewhat better for customers, since you can board anywhere in the turnaround loop and ride it through rather than walking to a point after the layover. Is the problem just the delay further on mid-route when the driver has to rest?

       2. It’s the delay or transfer mid-route. Imagine that you are a regular commuter on the 245 from your residence at Crossroads to your job at T-Mobile in Factoria. Now imagine that on every northbound trip you have to get off your bus at Eastgate and either get on another one or wait 15 minutes. Now imagine that your residence is actually in Redmond (where you’d transfer 245 -> B) and you effectively have a three-seat ride northbound.

       3. Is it really that expensive to just buy a port-a-potty for the layover spot. If it’s just bus drivers using it, it shouldn’t have to be cleaned all that often.

       4. Neither drivers nor adjoining property owners are very fond of port-a-potties. And with good reason, after the route 36 debacle.

          What is needed any place where there isn’t a reliable business partner close by is permanent standalone facilities with plumbing and T-key locks. Those cost money to build and maintain, but they work. (And maybe the worst part of not driving anymore was that I had to give up my T-key…)

       5. It is the reason, its in a Comfort Station Bulletin that was put out for the drivers. I know I’m not “Official” Metro communication, but I do work there.

       6. And to add to your replies, Im sorry you feel you may be inconvenienced 15m so your driver doesn’t have to wait upwards of an hour (to return to the other end) to pee. There has to be some give and take in all this. Installing permanent comfort stations requires approval from the surrounding areas. Plus there has to be a place for it. Does the school want that on their lot? Probably not. Now its easier to send the bus back to Eastgate, where we have ample facilities. For folks who need it, there is extra service between Factoria and Eastgate via the 241. Im rather disappointed (but not surprised) to see that your more worried about peoples 1-seat rides, or being inconvenienced 15min than make sure your driver can pee on their break, and have a pleasant day at work. I mean if they stop at Eastgate to pee, then your guys will complain the bus is always late. So theres no winning here. Metro is taking steps to solve the Comfort Station problem using resources we have. Maybe there was no solution, or agreement that could be reached at the old layover, we don’t know that. Metro could have just as easily terminated the route at Eastgate and forced you to the 241, so be happy with the compromises being made.

       7. I drove for Metro for 5 years. I’m well aware of the need for good facilities at both ends of the route. I don’t think it’s acceptable for drivers to have to wait 90 minutes to get to the other end. I also don’t think it’s acceptable to force all passengers to deboard and wait through a layover because there’s inadequate infrastructure to meet drivers’ basic needs. No one is going to ride the bus if we subject them to that. Factoria is a core destination on the Eastside generally and on the 245 specifically, and this is a real and major degradation in Factoria’s bus service. The responsibility is on Metro to find a way to fix the situation.

          At this specific layover, there is ample room to build a facility immediately north of the layover zone and outside of the school fence. There’s already a utility shed in the location. I feel certain that the problem is not lack of ability to build, but lack of budget. I want 245 riders whose trips are getting 15 minutes longer to understand that.

       8. The Rider Alert says only the last three evening runs will layover there (specifically the 9:21, 10:21, and 11:44pm runs). Does that make Factoria’s isolation less bad?

       9. That means the rest of the runs (including all daytime and peak hour runs) will lay over at Eastgate. It’s the layover at Eastgate that’s the problem.

          I assume those late-night trips lay over at Factoria because running times are shorter and it’s not too long until the driver gets back to Kirkland.

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12. It’s funny and said how once again, “increased service” results in less service for me, as my house is no longer served by the 73 loop down 20th NE at its north end. And this change is being implemented because…?

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