NE Seattle subsisted for decades on infrequent half-hourly service, and Metro’s recent restructure (despite some pain) largely doubled weekday service on all major corridors, giving NE Seattle frequent service for the first time and a much stronger base network. But a couple weeks in, it’s become clear that the restructure didn’t quite go far enough, especially in providing equivalent span of service. While reliance on frequent transfers makes for a better network, the infrequent legacy network  of one-seat rides is better than a reliance on infrequent transfers, which is what the weekend network now provides in NE Seattle.
Looking through route schedules, it looks like Metro paid for weekday frequency in part by trimming first and last trips, making a few trips notably worse. Say what you will about the crowded 70-series, but they began service before 5am on weekdays and 6am on weekends. Their replacements, with the exception of the 372 (which improved across the board), don’t begin weekend service until 6 or even 7am, and Routes 71 and 73 don’t run at all on Sundays. As a result, the ULink restructure made the following trips a lot harder:
- Early morning weekend trips from Wedgwood/Ravenna to the UDistrict via Route 65 (20 minutes later on Saturday and Sunday) and Route 71 (90 minutes later on Saturday and no Sunday service)
- Early weekend trips to SeaTac Airport via Link
- Sunday trips to Downtown via Link and Routes 8, 65, 67, 75, and 372, all of which require bus/rail transfers at 30-minute headways.
There are a number of ways to fix this in the next few service changes, and I believe that we should only ask riders to rely on transfers if we can make them frequent 7 days per week. Once we’ve achieved that, we should work to match arterial frequencies to Link, as transfers between 10-minute trains and 15-minute buses make for good connection opportunities only twice per hour.
As ridership data begins to roll in this summer and Metro looks to its September 2016 and March 2017 service changes, I hope they consider further investments in arterial service feeding Link, and feel confident in cutting back less-ridden services to do so. Route 73 probably needs Sunday service, routes 8, 38, 65, 67, 75, and 372 need to be frequent on Sundays, and an early/late trip may need to be added on each. To pay for it, likely fat to trim could include Routes 71 and 78 in their entirety, or maybe even some trips on Route 49 if its 12-minute service is leaving it as empty as my front-window anecdotes suggest. Of course, there are also other areas in which Metro is adding duplicative frequency while these neighborhoods would continue to wait. Beyond the less than fun zero sum game of service hour allocation, we can of course also hope a growing economy continues to increase total service hour availability.
In addition, continued reliance on a UW Station transfer should come with an unwavering service availability guarantee. Anyone who experienced the 520 Bridge opening last weekend saw newly restructured routes unable to reach the station, in some cases dropping riders off at 15th Ave NE instead. Reliance on transfers can and should work, but we have to sweat the details.
[Update Wednesday 7:45am: Oran has sent over a version of his Seattle Transit Map showing only the routes that run frequently 7 days per week, and it does a stellar job of visualizing the gaps in relying on Link connections on weekends.]
We need a TREE committee that actually cares about improving transit. The political routes are a drain on mobility throughout the region.
Thanks for jumping on this right away, Zach. It is never too soon to begin planning for the next service change (as was know KMetro do) but a drumbeat for improved weekend service both for workers and travelers is a must. And much better parade/event planning must be carried out. Too much disruption and too little service seem often to be the norm when making regular transit readily available during these events ought to be a much higher priority.
Sadly, the package being brought to the TrEE Committee this morning *is* the September service change. The 9x cut is at least partially data-driven, while the 38 extension is happening in the face of years of ridership data against it, and only a few days of data so far for the new 38.
The other new route, 243, is being paid for by various local governments.
The only help we’re getting to improve routes based on the Service Guidelines right now is coming from SDOT.
You still have time to email and call your county councilmember to urge them to follow the Service Guidelines, instead of the politically-devised Ordinance #2016-0199.
I just can’t believe the 42 is being brought back.
Oh wow, I had no idea that the 71/73 no longer run on Sundays. As a resident of the Ponzi scheme suburbs, where I rely on hourly bus routes, I have always argued that service span is more important than frequency (and my bus route has excellent span for suburban service, running past 11pm).
I was in the U district yesterday trying to make sense of the 372, which runs every 15 minutes , and the train, which runs every 10. The transfer actually connected nicely, but that is because the 372 was late.
I think a good compromise is 20 minutes, even though frequency purists would argue that this isn’t frequent. I think it’s silly that metro didn’t think about this at all (heck, even in my ST express concept network on page 2 I aligned bus frequencies with train frequencies).
At least Link has a real schedule now.
The 71 and 73 were not supposed to be there, and their resurrection took hours from the 45 and 67 that were going to be 10-minute frequent. The 71 was restored as a political consideration (like the 38 extension). The 73 was restored partly because people didn’t want to walk five blocks from 15th to Roosevelt, and partly so they wouldn’t have to transfer at the congested Northgate Transit Center. I thought the 71 and 73 were only going to run until 7pm so I was pleasantly surprised to see them running until 10pm and continuing to give 15-minute service to 65th & 15th. Weekends and off-hours are when Northgate is least congested, and the 41 is still running if anybody is going downtown.
Another problem is that the 45, 71, and 73 stop on Pacific Street while the 67 stops on Stevens Way. So those who could take either the 67 or 73 (which would partly make up for the 67’s non-boost of frequency) find that they cannot; they have to choose beforehand which stop to go to.
I really wish that they could reduce the number of buses running on Stevens Way. I really think they should have made a transit-center like thing inside the Montlake triangle, with a few bus bays on Montlake Bvld and some layover space. Stevens Way is not a very good transfer point to Link, although they could make it better with an underground speed walker to the second level of UW station (then that level at least has a use).
And even more confusing, there are some routes like the 372 that use Montlake going northbound and use Stevens going southbound.
The 372 always uses Stevens Way. It must be another route that makes that loop.
65 and 78 are the only ones that do the clockwise loop.
20 minutes is a horrible compromise. One broken down bus means a 40-minute gap.
Timing buses to Link only works if the route has no congestion bottlenecks and the bus stop is close to the train platform. Otherwise you’re better off just focusing on bus and train frequency. I would not consider the walk from the UW Station platform to Stevens Way reliable for timing a bus, and for the train I just note its frequency and plan to wait up to ten minutes. The theoretical 38 MLK-Renton route would be mostly reliable since Renton Ave never has traffic; but the short Rainier Avenue segment in Renton would make it less than 100% reliable.
Drop the 78 and bring back the 30 with an additional stop at u-link. The 30 did 10 times the ridership the 78 will ever do. Add a 30 stop at u-link and it will be more than full. Will also fill the gap of 74 and 75 am buses which arrive concurrently making them a single bus where they overlap.
I don’t think bringing back the 30 would help much. For those going from 55th Ave. to the U-district, the 74 still exists, and to ride the 30 all the way around west to the Ave., then east to Montlake, would be slower than other alternatives, such as the 65, 75, or 372.
30 would be a 1 seat ride to station. 75 is a pain in the ass transfer. 65 is an extra transfer. who knows where 372 goes.
@les
I don’t understand where you’re coming from (or going to) if the 30 was in walking distance but the 65 and 75 (and apparently the 71 and 372) all require a transfer to reach.
If you don’t know where the 372 goes, I would take a look at Metro’s 372 page, or you can see it’s route on OneBusAway.
For learning your way around Seattle’s transit network, Oran’s Seattle Transit Map is fantastic, and I find Google Maps indispensable for checking alternative routes for transit trips.
@Les,
It’s clear that you miss the 30 but the real change for the 30/74 alignment will probably only come when the Link U-district station comes online in what, five years? Then it would make sense to transform the currently peak only 74 into a resurrected 30 running all day to the U-district station to provide transit service from NE 55TH street/Ravenna to the u-district and via link to downtown.
It use to be so easy and convenient to get out of NE Seattle to places south and west and I never felt the need to use my car. But now the convenience is gone and I find myself driving again. This tells me Metro effd up.
“Never felt the need to use my car.” What, prey tell, did you do when the 30 dropped off-peak and weekend service? Or do you never travel off-peak? You can’t have used the 15-minute 65, 68, or 75 because they weren’t 15-minute then (a feature which was funded partly by deleting the 30). And lest you forget, the reason the 30’s off-peak/weekend service was in the first round of cuts was that it was practically the lowest-ridership in the Metro system.
I tried out the connection between Link and the 372 a couple times and found it to be a disappointment. The bus/train schedules line up so that, in many cases, you have to run all the way from the station to the bus stop in order to just barely make the connection (assuming you get lucky enough to get on the elevator out of the station). If only the 372 stopped on Montlake, like the 65/78 do.
There is one saving grace for the 30-minute frequency on Sundays, however – many people live in area where more than route home might be acceptable. For example, someone living near 30th Ave./70th St. could take either a 65 or a 372, whichever comes first. Somebody living in the Roosevelt area could take a 45 or 67, whichever comes first. Yes, having to pull out OneBusAway to see which stop to wait at sucks, but it is at least doable. It would be even better if cell reception existed down at the platform level, so you could get the OneBusAway fiddling out of the way while riding up the escalator.
The bus displays at the station also leave something to be desired. They show the Pacific Street buses and the little-used Montlake Blvd buses but they don’t seem to show the Stevens Way buses. The Pacific Street schedule is the least necessary because there’s always a bus going to 45th, and a bus to 65th every five or ten minutes with the 45/71/73. People more likely want to know about the Stevens Way buses (which drop to half-hourly earlier) to decide whether it’s worth walking five minutes there or to take a Pacific Street or Montlake Blvd bus instead if they can.
I have found the same inconvenience with transferring from light rail to the # 372. First it takes several minutes to get from the train platform to street level on at least 3 long escalators before you can cross over Montlake Boulevard and the trek up the incline to Stevens Way. So add the escalator time to the walk time and it is more then 5 minutes then what Metro says it takes. But then Metro also says that the # 372 would have 4 to 15 minute service in peak times and that is not happening as they don’t start that until almost 7 am and until that time it is every 30 minutes meaning that I now have to get up 30 minutes earlier then before to make it on time to downtown at the Westlake Station. So anything that Metro says I take with a grain of salt.
Psst, one of the elevators goes from the platform all the way up to the pedestrian bridge. But don’t overuse it because people who are disabled or in an urgent hurry need it.
There are 2 elevators but it seems it takes for ever for them to come to the platform and when they do there is quite a crowd to use them and not everyone can get on.
My point is that Metro says it takes about 5 minutes to get from Stevens Way to the train and visa versa but it takes longer then that but as I said I take everything that Metro says with a grain of salt.
Yeah, it’s 5 minutes from the station entrance, but more like 8 minutes or so from the station platform. If push comes to shove, I think it is possible to do it in 5 if you really hustle and the escalators are not crowded, but that should not be a basic expectation to meet a connecting bus.
I knew this would be an issue, and one reason I wrote this:
https://seattletransitblog.wpcomstaging.com/2015/04/06/little-remarked-funiculars-of-puget-sound/
At some point, a better link between Link and the actual UW campus is probably going to be desirable.
As the 372 doesn’t stop at Montlake Blvd in front of the Light Rail its really not a viable connection for many. Ravenna/Bryant would have been well served to downtown if the 372 was a straight shoot down to Montlake Blvd and then wove up into the University. With the demise of the 71 downtown and the 76 only running in peak hours otherwise a 30 minute trip is now 60 minutes making public transit not a very attractive option and it very frustrating to have a light rail station within 2 miles that isn’t accessible except by bike.
Seems a circulator running straight up and down 25th and Montlake would be the answer.
Jim,
The 372 kept its south/westbound routing through campus on Stevens Way for two reasons. The first is that the U continues to be a major destination for 372 riders, of course. The second, though, is that southbound traffic on Montlake/25th can be absolutely monstrous. There are many times of day that you could take a leisurely stroll down the sidewalk on Montlake and easily win a race against a southbound car. Running a bus down Montlake would have been an exercise in futility.
I do agree that it would be nice to have a shorter walk from the bus to the station, but it just isn’t practical for the bus to get there. The 78’s loop around the Montlake triangle is pretty clever, though I am sure I will never use it.
The stop on Montlake Blvd is not very close to the station either. It’s two blocks away, so about the same distance as the Pacific Street stop. Does that mean none of the bus routes are a viable connection to Link?
The thing about southbound Montlake is that it’s only really consistently bad during rush hour. Jams can occur off-peak, but only when there’s something special to provoke it, such as a Montlake bridge opening, an accident blocking a lane, or a major event that everyone is trying to go home from at once. When you drive, you can look at the traffic report and take Montlake if it’s moving or use an alternate route if it isn’t. With transit, you don’t have that option. Because Montlake is sometimes backed up, transit riders have to take the slow detour all the time, even when Montlake isn’t backed up.
In an ideal world, Metro would think outside the box and use Montlake as a primary route, but give the driver discretion to use Stevens Way as an alternate route when traffic on Montlake as particularly bad. Since nobody is getting on the 372 here (it’s the end of the line), it doesn’t really matter all that much if you don’t know in advance which stop the bus is going to be stopping at.
I think having multiple possible routes for the 372 on campus is a bad idea. I routinely take the 372. Relatively few people get off at Rainier Vista and walk down toward UW Station, somewhat more get off at the next stop and walk down to the Health Science complex. But by far the most popular stop is Pend-Oreille Road, and there’s no nearby stop on Montlake. Nor for some inexplicable reason is there any stop on westbound Pacific between UW Station and 15th, so someone heading to the Fountain or Kane Hall is in for a surprisingly long walk if the bus unexpectedly heads down Montlake.
Also, a non-neglgible number of people take the bus within campus, say between the HUB and Campus Parkway.
It is interesting that the snow route for the # 372 has it going down Montlake Blvd before turning right onto Pacific and then to Campus Parkway. The buses can’t go through the campus because of the hilly terrain and especially the hill up from 25th Ave NE. So on snow days the students have to walk and you get a better connection to light rail.
Isn’t one of the elephants in the room the fact that the UW station is located where it’s currently impossible to serve by southbound buses? Montlake needs a dedicated bus lane. Negotiate with the UW, reconsider the center strip/turn lanes, move buses along a corridor currently occupied by UW parking. But do something. How can there be a major rail transit station sited where feeder transit can’t access?
It wasn’t intended to be a major transit station; it’s just fulfilling that role temporarily until U-District Station opens in five years.
We have so few Link stations and most are intended as connection points between trains and buses. That makes them all “major transit stations.”
With a multi-billion dollar, many year ST3 project before voters, the answer to a problem can’t be, “Well the next phase will address that. This is just temporary.” People expect the system to operate reasonably well at all stages of development. And the problem of moving passengers in and out the Montlake/Stadium/UWMC is such a large one that a more immediate and permanent solution is called for.
Peter, I agree. There is room on Montlake southbound between the street and Burke Gillman. They ought to completely redo Montlake between the stadium and U Village. Those sidewalks are perilous today as well, with the curb rising no more than an inch above the road in some places. The entire area needs to be rebuilt. This would entail working with UW, unfortunately, who has not proven to be great partner.
UW has slowly come around, but the kicker would be getting WSDOT to play ball.
The following would seem like a good catalyst for the decades-overdue widening of southbound Montlake Blvd. for transit reliability & emergency vehicle access to UW Medical Center:
2018 UW Seattle Campus Master Plan proposes 8 million square feet of new construction, a good chunk of it in the oceanic parking lots east of campus and along Montlake Blvd. Check this out; the scale and renderings are massive. East Campus would be unrecognizable in this plan.
https://pm.uw.edu/files/master-plan/OnlineMeetingFINAL.pdf
Preliminary Plan Concepts Developed – Winter and Spring 2016
Draft Plan and Draft EIS published – Fall 2016
Final Plan and Final EIS published – Winter 2017
Hearing Examiner and City Council – Summer 2017
City Council and Board of Regents approval – Late 2017 or early 2018
It will be critically important for SDOT and WADOT to address Montlake Blvd. north of the station when they make their planned changes to the south of the station with the additional bridge over the cut, the 520 lid and other changes to improve connectivity to 520 and points south.
Their work north of the station is by no means complete and it would be remiss of us to not be constantly reminding them of this.
Sorry for attention lapse on this one. But used to drive both the 71 and the 73. What’s closest bus service these passengers DO have on weekends? Because even across 60 miles, when the wind’s right you can smell what you can’t see.
I’m getting a strong scent of chronic money shortage aggravated by leaderless politics leaving a healthy newborn creature dying of gangrene. Any EMT, have I got my symptoms right? And anybody in Emergency Room, am I reading the smell right?
Suspicious about whether money deficiency is a cause, or a symptom of the exact political disease that original Metro was designed to prevent. Either way, exact pathology less important than the damage. Otherwise: what are we going to do to prevent ST3 from being amputated?
Mark Dublin
Although the 62 will be more relevant in a few years when the Roosevelt station opens, it was missed in the span of service chart. It starts at 4:46 at Green Lake or 5:40 at Sand Point on weekdays. Sat/Sun are 5:45 at Sand Point.
There are a lot of transfer points along this route, or you can take a long 1-seat ride to SLU.
Matt, is there any way to keep the 62 on time? Or count on any usable connection with it?
Mark
Probably not during rush hour – Dexter is pretty terrible. But if we’re talking about span of service it does start pretty early (no traffic at 4:46am!).
For transfers, you could switch to the 45 or 65 to light rail (both frequent, start early).
We’re on the verge of giving up the 62 because of reliability. Some family members need to get from Ravenna (25th Ave) to North Seattle College. 62–>26 should work, except because the 26 is every 30 minutes, a late 62 could cost us 30 minutes of commute time. And the 62 is routinely 5-10 minutes late.
Other options include 372–>75–>345/346/40 and 62–>67–>345/346/40, but while those buses all have 15 minute frequency or better, it does mean 3 buses in each direction every day.
We miss the 68.
Last week I posted my complaints about the deletion of route # 72 and having to use the # 372 instead and having to walk across the UW Campus to get to the light rail station and losing the direct service to U District. Of course I got feedback telling me how wonderful the NE changes were. But now this week some of you are finding out that not all of the changes that may have looked good on paper are not so good in reality.
So all I can say is welcome to the new transit service in NE Seattle and finding out it is not all that great.
I’d argue that 73 is fat that can be trimmed. I don’t say this lightly (I live on 16th Ave NE, a block away from the former 72X/73X stop on 15th). What we had before was bad (at a roughly 20 min frequency), but what we have now is worse. A 73 that comes every 30 mins and doesn’t run on Sundays might as well not run at all. A 67 and 372 that runs every 15 mins but requires 5 extra blocks of walking is actually pretty decent, but at 30 min frequency on Sundays – eff that.
The most interesting thing about the 73 is, should there be a bus on 15th long-term after the North Link and Lynnwood Link restructures? Or will Roosevelt BRT be sufficient to Northgate, and something else north of Northgate? I’m actually divided on that, because
(1) the U-Link restructure was supposed to consolidate 15th/Roosevelt service into an ultra-frequent Roosevelt route,
(2) at the same time it is useful to have a route on 15th for people in 65th, Maple Leaf, and Jackson Park,
(3) the most grid-correct would be a straight route on 15th from UW Station to Mountlake Terrace Station. But Metro seems to think that would be low-ridership because it bypasses destinations like Northgate and the Crest Cinema and goes by single-family houses instead.
what happened with (1)?
The public feedback asked for some 73 service to be retained, mainly because transferring at Northgate would be a bummer, the Northgate Way congestion would make it worse, and there’s a gap between where the 67 turns (at Northgate Way) and where the 347/348 turn (at Pinehurst Way). So Metro retained the 73 weekdays.
The 71 issue was County Counclmember Dembrowski: he persuaded the Council to override Metro and retain the 71 because his family uses it. This on top of the 62 leads to an astonishing 6 buses an hour on NE 65th Street, an area that is mostly single-family with some one-story businesses.
We should require that members of the TREE committee use the service guidelines for something other than a napkin
Definitely not as urgent as NE Seattle, but it would be nice if the 31 ran on Sundays as well, at least as far as Fremont (maybe loop right after the bridge). Otherwise, lower Fremont (where a lot of the new construction is) only has 30 minute service on Sundays to UW Station via the 32, or a long-long trek up the hill to the 44. I doubt there’s much demand for Sunday Magnolia service, so a short run 31 seems like a good compromise.
Considering how busy Discovery Psrk is, maybe have it go there on weekends?
There’s a fair number of apartments and detached accessory units along the 31 through there. It’s not hugely busy, but it isn’t as bad as outer Magnolia.
I’ve been happy going downtown and transferring to the 24/33 on Sundays to get to Discovery Park, but I’m young and hale so maybe that will change soon…
From north Seattle, my preferred route to Discovery Park is actually the 44, followed by a walk across the Ballard locks.
I agree. I frequently visit the Fremont market on Sundays, and having just one bus every 30 minutes to get back is a disappointment. I’ve tried walking up the hill to the 44 a couple times, but it turns out that walking up the hill, then waiting 10 minutes for a 44 is not really any faster than waiting 25 minutes for a 32. About once every few weeks or so, I end up taking Car2Go from Fremont to the U-district just to avoid a 25-minute wait for the 32.
Furthermore, if the 32/75 took Pacific/Montlake in the eastbound direction, it would save a considerable amount and make the route, combined with Link, a viable option for Wallingford->downtown travel. As it is, the zip-zagging between Pacific St., Campus Parkway, and Stevens Way, and all those stoplights just makes the trip too slow.
Even if not that many people are riding the 31 in Magnolia, having some way out of the peninsula without having to backtrack most of the way downtown should count as basic service. The magnolia tail is only a small portion of the 31’s service hours – the important part is Fremont->U-district. So, yes, it should operate 7 days week, and also during the evening after 7 PM.
What is going to happen during UW Football season? You can’t get anywhere near Husky Stadium!
“In addition, continued reliance on a UW Station transfer should come with an unwavering service availability guarantee. Anyone who experienced the 520 Bridge opening last weekend saw newly restructured routes unable to reach the station, in some cases dropping riders off at 15th Ave NE instead. Reliance on transfers can and should work, but we have to sweat the details.”
I asked that question what would happen during the football season at a meeting with Metro planners and they had no answer because it seems that they had not given that any thought. So if the 520 bridge opening is any indication good luck getting to transfer from buses to light rail when it is game time at the stadium.
Priceless.
Those who have travelled on bus near the stadia after a sporting event know Metro is quite experienced handling projectable gridlocked traffic. The buses run late, or more buses get pressed into service.
The Seahawks shuttles stage over on 5th Ave, a pretty good walk from the Clink. Of course, a lot of regular buses have to use that street, too.
Unlike the shuttles for the 520 bridge event, which were picking up thousands of people who got to them via Link, the Husky football shuttles do not have to stage right by Husky Stadium. A lot of those shuttles may end up just dropping and picking at Angle Lake Station, Rainier Beach Station, and ID Station.
Also unlike the 520 bridge event, Husky football is a recurring event, which will allow Metro to improve its plan over time. On days like that, though, riders will be glad their route runs on Stevens Way.
Except they don’t run on Stevens Way when there is a game at Husky Stadium but all buses are routed off the campus on game days other then the Husky football shuttles. After the game both 25th Ave NE and 35th Ave NE become northbound only and the # 65 and #75 were routed onto NE 55th and other side streets to get to Campus Parkway and visa versa. .
Before the game they were routed up NE 45th to 15th Ave NE and then south to Campus Parkway and visa versa. Since the # 372 didn’t run on the weekends who knows what Metro will do with that route. .
So if that continues this football season good luck getting to the light rail station on game days.
Sorry, this is not fully on topic but is germane
I just got off a crush-loaded northbound 372 that stopped picking people up after the medical center. The driver announced that we should contact Metro to complain, because they listened to passengers more than drivers. He commented that Metro apparently didn’t realize that 372 was now carrying all the former 68 riders, hence it was getting crushloaded and forced to leave a lot of riders standing at the bus stops.
Where does one complain to Metro?
Not only the passenger from the # 68 but also the passenger from the # 72, Yes nothing like deleting 2 routes and then trying to service the deleted routes with only one route which was already busy before the changes.
And good luck complaining to Metro as I have done that and it is like talking to the wall because you will get no response.
Same problem with the 373. Completely crowded for morning and evening commutes. (And tonight they sent a short bus!) I’m going to have to start driving. At least I can afford it, sort of.
To be fair, I have received responses from Metro. They seem to think they’re doing a great job.
I called in a complaint to Metro a couple weeks ago about rider alerts being on the wrong stops. A couple days later, they were fixed.
Other parts of town have long had to deal with one-off crush-loaded buses from time to time. 550 riders have it like that, every day it seems like, but their buses are hyper-frequent. They have learned how to fill up all the space.
If the ridership demand is exceeding crushload capacity on a route over a period of time (not just on one random bus), then that would be the most urgent problem to identify.
You can either call Metro at 206-553-3000 to leave a comment, or write them an email at http://metro.kingcounty.gov/cs/index.html#comment
My experience has been that if Metro responds to you it will take several weeks. And the response will either be A – a form letter saying they have forwarded your comments to the appropriate division or B – a form letter that sort of references your email, but doesn’t actually address your specific questions or complaints.
Or they might just not respond at all. If there’s a way to confirm that someone at Metro actually read or listened to your comments, I don’t know it.
The options to get to Northgate transit from UW light rail is terrible. Two routes remain, 67 and 75 after the revisions. They both come by so infrequently during afternoon rush hour, I find myself waiting 40+ minutes at times. They need an express that stops less frequently on these routes, particularly the 75. It stops every three blocks in places.