September 2016 Service Change Details

85 Replies to “September 2016 Service Change Details”

1. Just curious, but why is the 48 being detoured? If it’s because somebody rich and powerful just moved there or is doing an AirB&B, what will it cost us to get them to move someplace we need transit to go?

   Mark

   1. I saw it yesterday on an evening 43. On 23rd starting from Madison the two southbound lanes are closed, and traffic is shifted to the northbound lanes with a tight angle turn. I’m not sure if there’s even two lanes open; it looked like there was only room for one lane.

      1. 23rd is one lane southbound (and zero lanes northbound) from Cherry to Madison due to construction. The 48 has had a series of different reroutes over the past year as the construction area has moved north from Jackson.

      2. Up to this point, the construction on 23rd has had the 48 reroute to MLK and back. Now, however with Zone C (Union to Madison) underway, to continue the reroute along MLK for that section would require a sharp left turn at Madison, then a slow push up the steepest part on Madison in the valley, before turning right again onto 23rd. By going west 4 blocks to 19th instead, it can stay on a relatively level street and avoid those hills.

2. Wow! A grab bag of changes that adds up to real improvement. Two major new frequent corridors on the south end, a minor new frequent corridor on the north. Plus better/broader peak service and improved reliability on Pine. Whatever combination of Metro/SDOT/STB/random people shaped this, you did pretty good.

   1. I’ll miss having all buses at the Pine & Bellevue westbound stop. Going east it’s schizophrenic with different routes stopping at different stops two blocks away from each other and around the corner. Going west they all stop at Pine & Bellevue so you can wait at one stop for any of them. I always wished the common corridor could be pushed further east to serve more of Capitol Hill, especially when the routes were less frequent than they are now.

      1. You still have it. What does does is removes the Route 11 and Route 49 off of pinestreet much earlier on the Northbound trip. The southbound traffic is not affected.

      2. Ok, thanks Byron – I had Mike’s concern for a minute, since that five-bus WB stop is basically my life. Then I also realized this was outbound / NB trips, though I’m having trouble visualizing the change — does the “convention place” stop on Pike get deleted, or moved west to between 7th and 8th?

   2. Long-timers will remember that this was the eastbound pattern in the early days of the DSTT. The Pine Street routes turned on 7th to serve a stop across from Convention Place Station (the stop was north of the Paramount, with a mid-block crosswalk), while the Olive Way routes stayed on Pike Street to Bellevue Avenue. That gave a better connection between between the tunnel buses and the eastbound Pine Street buses. The problem then was that the routes were split between two different streets, so if you wanted to take either the 10 or 43, you had to choose beforehand, which was a bigger issue when they were half-hourly. I’m not sure if that’s what made all eastbound routes move back to Pike Street or if there were other conflicts with 7th Avenue.

      Also, when Pine Street was closed full-time at Westlake Park, the westbound buses turned and went down to Union Street, which was a pain for transferring to other routes that stopped at Pike/Pine.

3. Any word on when the 560 shift from 112th Ave SE to 405 is happening?

4. It will be interesting to see what effect the change from Bellevue to 8th has on the 11 — that route is a disaster in the afternoons (to the point where every few days I can make the 2.5 mile walk home from Capitol Hill station before an 11 ever catches up). Hopefully it will solve some of the delays that route suffers.

   1. I’m guessing it will start as a construction reroute when South Bellevue P&R closes, then get formalized in the February 2017 shakeup. No reason to skip South Bellevue until its not there anymore.

      1. He’s talking about route 11 from DT to Capitol Hill which is being moved off Bellevue Ave E not out of city of Bellevue.

      2. Sorry, this was supposed to be responding to Kedar’s question about the 560.

5. How is the pulse at UW station going to work? How much time is there between when the train comes in and the buses leave?

   1. At least in the case of the 372, the current late-evening schedule has it so that you can make a connection from every other train without a long wait, but it’s a very tight connection that basically requires running all the way up the escalators to Stevens Way. For those that don’t want to do that, the in-between trips offer a 15’ish minute wait after a leisurely walk to the bus stop. My guess is that the “pulse” means Metro will shift the late-evening 372 trips back about 5 minutes to make things easier.

      1. I have figured out that if I catch the Light Rail at Westlake Station that leave either at the top of the hour, or 10 minutes, 30 minutes or 40 minutes after the hour I will have about as good of a connection to the # 372. It takes me about 9 minutes from the time I get of the train, up the elevators up to the bridge and then the walk uphill to get to Stevens Way where I will have about a 5 to 7 minute wait for the bus. If I catch the train at either 20 or 50 minutes after the hour it is a mad dash to try to make the bus and it isn’t worth it.

         I also walk up the stop prior to Rainer Vista because that stop has a bench to sit and has a cover if it rains. The stop at Rainer Vista is nothing more then a stick in the ground with a bus stop sign on top it.

   2. A pulse with a 7-minute walk in between better have a built-in buffer time.

6. What will happen to the 550 during the South Bellevue P&R closure? Will there be a temporary P&R, or will people just have to distribute to the other P&Rs.

   1. There will be a “temporary” stop on southbound Bellevue Way nearside 112th Ave SE. The concrete pad is already there and a shelter will likely show up at some point. No reroute. Sound Transit has leased a bunch of parking around the area, scattered throughout Bellevue, although I can’t find the flyer detailing this.

      1. Okay I found the flyer (have it via email). Based on license plate surveys of people parking at South Bellevue, they’re directing people to use various park and ride facilities including South Sammamish, Issaquah TC, South Kirkland, Houghton, and Newport Hills. They’ve also identified 8 new leased lots, primarily in the Lake Hills, Crossroads, and Overlake areas, and several other existing leased lots with capacity. The map identifies (poorly) alternative bus service from those locations to the 550, 554, or 541 for service to Bellevue and Downtown Seattle.

      2. Hello, two seat rides. It will be interesting to see how many people are willing to drive to a P&R, take a local bus to a trunk route, and transfer to it. And they may have to transfer again at the far end. Much of our suburban planning is based on the assumption that most people won’t do that, with rare exceptions like the Bonney Lake shuttle (which is so forty miles out that they shouldn’t expect more). But if it turns out that people are more willing to park and take a bus to the trunk route, that could open up new possibilities for parking management\, such as remote P&Rs, or several small P&Rs rather than one big one.

      3. I hope they’re planning to add bus capacity from some of the other P&Rs. The 218/219 and 255 in particular are already full to bursting and don’t have room for additional S Bellevue P&R refugees without additional trips.

      4. I’m not that optimistic about people on the Eastside being that willing to tolerate 2-seat rides, especially those that are used to one-seat express service. Many of the parking facilities being suggested are already near capacity, so I don’t think this would affect ridership on other peak expresses that much, but I could be wrong.

         South Bellevue is somewhat notorious for being used by downtown Bellevue workers avoiding parking costs; if you have an employer-provided ORCA card, the cost per day is either free or less than $1 per day. I think this explains some of the wide geographic catchment area of South Bellevue P&R. We’ll see what those people do; its not like Mercer Island P&R has capacity, and the only other close P&Rs with easy access to downtown Bellevue are Issaquah Highlands (full), Issaquah TC (mostly full), and South Kirkland (mostly full). I suppose Overlake P&R too since the B line exists, but that takes a half-hour to downtown Bellevue, and with the coming closure of Overlake TC too I figure a lot of those drivers switch to Overlake P&R and use the 541.

         I think Sound Transit’s original idea was to lease one big lot or several smaller lots either along the current 550 route or close enough that the 550 could be easily rerouted, but that didn’t pan out.

      5. I am also not very optimistic that people will be willing to park their car somewhere where they have to take a local feeder bus to get to a Seattle express, but if the cost of leasing the lots is small enough, I say, why not? Most of these lots belong to churches, who have nothing better to do with their parking spaces on weekdays when hardly anybody is at the church.

7. Not surprised to see the 40 adding extra trips starting just from crown hill. Like the 41 its starting to get too full too early.

   I hope metro considers more 41s in the near future as well. Its already crush load at many times of day. The southbound buses are frequently full before getting to Northgate, and the northbound buses are overfull by the time they reach Westlake (let alone convention place).

   As more apartments open in Northgate and Lake City this bus will continue to burst at the seams.

   Northgate link can’t come soon enough.

   I wonder where the riders at Convention will go when that station closes? Will they all just walk to/from Westlake?

   1. Agree that the 41 needs more trips. I am on one right now and we are very close to full. The 41 needs service every 10 minutes to Downtown until 11. This will help people at northgate not get left behind.

   2. I live near Pine & Bellevue so I used to use Convention Place all the time, mostly to go to the U-District but a few times a month to Bellevue and occasionally to other places. I always hated walking across the freeway and having the southbound routes split between multiple bays (if I’m just going down to Pioneer Square or Spokane street). When Link started I switched to it and have only used Convention Place once or twice. Usually for northbound trips I walk up to Capitol Hill Station or take the 10, and for southbound trips I take a bus to Westlake. Sometimes if I’m going to some place the Convention Place buses still serve I’ll go to that station (more likely if it’s northbound), but since I don’t like that station much I usually take a bus to Westlake. If the 10 and 47 are pulled off Pine Street, then the buses will be less frequent and I may start walking to Westlake more.

      Wait a minute. If the westbound 10 and 47 don’t turn onto Pine, then will they turn onto Pike Street instead? How will that work when Pike Street turns one-way the other direction a few blocks down?

8. Are there any details on what “re-organizing Vashon Island service” means? Hopefully, it will mean bus schedules that are better coordinated with the ferry schedules. Currently, there is no coordination whatsoever.

   1. +1

   2. Vashon is the most baffling transit void to me.

      Its “downtown” is a trek from the ferry terminal. If you want to get around without a car, you have to pre-arrange “Lyft” rides with the one Lyft driver on the island who is doing a heroic job of trying to rustle up other rideshare drivers, or plan to hitchhike. The bus stops are far apart, time- and distance-wise.

      I can understand wanting to reduce visitors to keep up your way of life, but right now, it’s just filtering for people who have cars. Vashon’s main attractions (to visitors) seem to be restaurants and wineries, the clientele of which you’d want to give the option to not drive.

      I am also curious about this re-org.

   3. What’s baffling? It’s a rural island. In the seventies when my dad bought a house there, nobody had heard of it. I only experienced it weekends when we fixed the house up, but as I met locals I got to understand the island mentality: everyone goes to the same school, shops at the same two supermarkets, there’s a sense you’re all in the same boat, and there’s always somebody going to the ferry for events or work in Seattle. Its largest industries in the mid century were K2 skis and rock quarries. Some people worked in Seattle but most of those I knew didn’t. I attended the annual fair and there was a “Friends of the Library” book sale and I saw the library was King County. “We’re still in King County?” it was so remote to my early-teen mind that it felt far away. There were three Metro routes on the island — the same as now. asdf2 and I and a group a transit hikers went there last summer for the strawberry festival and to explore a wood near the town center. The island hasn’t changed much physically: just a little more built up and renovated. I can’t speak to who lives there now because I don’t know; I understand it has gotten a lot more expensive with affluent people moving in. But artists live there, and a monastery in a house.

      Re wineries (does Vashon really have them?) and restaurants (do off-islanders really go to them? Beyond just the “I need to eat now; here’s a place”), I suspect wineries’ target market is well-heeled drivers, and restaurants are just used to the lack of transit on the island because it has always been minimal. But it raises the pint that the island is missing out on tourism because of the lack of transit for visitors and the long ferry lines for cars. When we went to the festival, the special shuttle bus was overflowing, but luckily the Metro bus went five minutes later. But coming back we had to wait half an hour for the bus which is every 60-90 minutes.

      1. The most baffling thing is why not coordinate the bus schedule to the ferry schedule better.

9. Interesting set of changes.

   65/67 – EB 65 already has 10 minute peak service, so this would just be for the WB 67. It’s an improvement, but personally I think a better change would be to shift articulated buses to the route (and the 75 too). I had kind of assumed that with articulated 71/72/73s going away, other NE Seattle routes would be seeing more articulated buses, but it seems they all went to the 62.

   Also, I wonder why this (and the 73) are the only NE Seattle buses to see increased Sunday service. Aren’t the 75 and 372 deserving too? I’ve found that between Ravenna-downtown on Sundays, the most reliable and often fastest way is the 62. Yes, it meanders, but you don’t have to walk down Rainier Vista, you don’t have to wait 30 minutes if you just miss your transfer, and as a bonus downtown you’re already at street level.

   1. At least in the southbound direction, you will never have to wait 30 minutes at Ranier Vista. Northbound, I don’t think I could stomach riding the 62 all the way, with all those twists and turns. Fortunately, Link is pretty reliable, so once you learn the 372 schedule, it is possible to work backwards and have a good connection with every other train. Link tends to follow the unpublished scheduled on OneBusAway very closely, so that also helps. For instance, last week, I left a restaurant in Capitol Hill (one block from the Link station) 14 minutes before the 372 was scheduled to leave Ranier Vista, and made the connection with no problems. This was shortly after 10 PM on Sunday night.

      1. I agree with that planning, to prevent long waits for a transfer – but it’s harder to do when I go Amtrak-LINK-bus on a Sunday evening, with some luggage!

   2. I am glad to see 20-min waits for the 65 on Sundays (the current 30-min is a pain), but I too wish there were more 60′ coaches on the route! Yesterday I was on a 10-min late crush loaded 40′ at the beginning of peak hour… and UW is on break!

   3. It’s probably the limited number of articulateds and limited service hours. The 71/72/73X were articulated because most people were traveling between the U-District and downtown. The numbers were expected to vastly decrease when they were truncated. The original proposal was to delete the 71 and 73 entirely, and shift the hours to the 45 and 67 (10 minutes off-peak instead of 15). That broke down because people clamored for residual service on the 71 and 73. (73: because of the 67’s detour at congested Northgate messing up transfers to the 347/348; 71: because Dembrowski’s wife wanted it.) The remaining problem seems to be extreme differences between peak- and off-peak loads. Perhaps northeast Seattle is not so different from the suburbs after all. In any case, Metro claims the 62 had overcrowding so it mobilized all artiulateds toward it. Many people wonder how that’s possible when there are often 0-3 people on it east of 15th. Any congestion must be between downtown and Fremont.

      However, I ride all these northeast routes and I don’t experience the standing room only other people say. It must be in the traditional commute only because I don’t see it reverse commuting or midday. People say the 372 is overcrowded but I’ve never seen it more than half full. Likewise with the 71, you’ve got to be kidding. The 45 is SRO northbound evening peak like the 48 always was, but that’s the worst I’ve seen.

      The other thing about the 71 and 73 is 15th. It is convenient to have combined 15-minute frequency to 65th, and the area is high enough density that it probably should as a baseline. So shifting the service to Roosevelt seems to be confirmed a bad idea. (I also thought the 71 and 73 ended at 7pm, but was pleasantly surprised to see them running until 10pm six days a week. Was that a late change? They’re certainly convenient for stopping at the produce stand at 65th & 15th while transferring.) But that 71 tail! Low ridership on 65th and Wedgwood. Get that thing rerouted. Preferably in a way that increases frequency on 15th. I don’t know about the 73 tail since I’ve never ridden it since the reorg.

      The 75 has historically had low ridership evenings and weekends, so that’s probably why it’s in the back of the line for full-time frequency. The midday 15-minute service is much more convenient than the 30-minute service was, but ridership is mediocre east of U-Village. So I worry whether Metro will keep it up.

      There’s another problem with the 62. If you’re going north/east via any route (67/71/73/372) you’ll just miss the 62. Sometimes you’ll be in the bus waiting at the light to get to your stop and the 62 passes; other times you get off the bus and are waiting for the light to walk back across the street when the 62 passes. They’re all 15-minute routes so you can’t take the next one to get a better transfer time; they all just miss it. Going west/south they have better timing.

      1. The 62 has been experiencing crush loads between Fremont and downtown. There’s a fundamental tension for the moment between loads on the two halves of the route, and that will stay true until Roosevelt Station opens, at which point the 62 will suddenly become the only bus route that makes sense for great swaths of NE Seattle.

         Councilmembers have been eyeing the service hours from the east half of the 62 for their own pet projects, proposing that half of 62 trips turn back at Green Lake all day. So far Metro has been able to resist that.

      2. OK, but I don’t see standing room only on Dexter or in Fremont either. However, I don’t go southbound in the AM peak or northbound in the PM peak so that may be why.

      3. I actually don’t think turning back half the 62 trips at Green Lake would be such a bad thing. 30-minute frequency on the tail of the 62 is fine for now; it can be upgraded to frequent service once Roosevelt Station opens, but in the meantime, increasing the span of frequent service on other NE Seattle routes, such as the 65 and 372 would probably be better use of the funding.

      4. The long articulated 62s eastbound have a helluva time turning right from Woodlawn onto Ravenna — most of the time drivers are forced to let passengers off several feet from the curb. Additionally, the 45 also stops there, which creates an additional delay. Since the 62 runs every 15 minutes it would make sense to use smaller buses, or use the stop adjacent where the 16 used to stop, now only used by the 82 night route. I often wonder if drivers are ever consulted on where to place a stop or a transfer point– if they were I don’t think this type of stop arrangement would have happened.

      5. Things will change dramatically once Link gets to Northgate. But we shouldn’t base our routes on that, since that is years away, and will come with a major restructure anyway. I would look into timing the 71 with a truncated 62. Then I would modify the 71 to have the same tail. That would mean that from east of 15th, the 62 and 71 are identical, and run every 15 minutes.

         What I always wonder about ideas like this is whether they would save money, though. I don’t think you can transfer the service to somewhere else. The truncated 62 does what exactly? It can’t turn around and head the other way, because it has to be timed with the full service 62 that ran 15 minutes earlier.

         So an alternative would be a split (like the 347/348). I can see a few possibilities. One is send it on the 63 route up to Northgate Transit Center. This would restore some service to 5th NE (which took a big hit with the last restructure) and provide for a faster (albeit infrequent) connection from Northgate to Roosevelt. Another possibility is to follow the old route, and now double up the 26 (assuming this could be timed). Or you could send this to Lake City. That would be an interesting bus, in that it would connect Roosevelt to Lake City in the fastest way possible (via Lake City Way and Roosevelt) which is a huge improvement.

         My personal favorite would be to send the bus up the 73 route. If timed correctly, this would give 15th NE the same 15 minute frequency as the other corridors in the area. This provides a greatly improved set of connections (Pinehurst to Wallingford and Fremont) but also provides a great option for getting to the U-District. As a rider, if you time it right, you get the 73. If not, you get the 62, where you have a lot of buses to choose from to get to the UW (more than you would if you went towards Northgate). Both splits of the 62 would have a lot in common. You can take the bus to the U-District or 15 minutes later, take a bus to Roosevelt, and on to Wallingford and Fremont. That would change my world (but I’m not sure how many others).

         As with all these options, it is tough to get the timing right during rush hour. I think it would make sense if the bus ran as it did today during rush hour, but made the alternate route outside it (when timing would be easier to get right).

      6. “Things will change dramatically once Link gets to Northgate. But we shouldn’t base our routes on that, since that is years away, and will come with a major restructure anyway. I would look into timing the 71 with a truncated 62. Then I would modify the 71 to have the same tail. That would mean that from east of 15th, the 62 and 71 are identical, and run every 15 minutes.”

         STB editors, could we have a “What to do with the 62?” article please? Even if it doesn’t have a brilliant solution, it would be a place to discuss all the issues around NE 65th Street and maybe generate better ideas.

         I applaud Metro for trying to (A) provide frequent grid and crosstown service, and (B) pre-creating corridors to planned Link stations. The former is what we’ve been asking Metro to do for years. The latter is important in general to pregenerate ridership, trip patterns, and home/work choices. These things take several years to build up so a head start is worthwhile. However, a particular corridor may have contrary factors such as too-long transfer waits (insufficient frequency), too-short transfer distances (geographic constraint), or too-low density and residential-only zoning (land use issue). So the question is what applies to 65th?

         Suggestions have included splitting the route at Greenlake, Fremont, or RossB’s 71 idea. I know several people who are happy about the one-seat ride from Fremont to Sand Point, and Fremont to Greenlake, and would be disappointed to lose it. The trick is to split a route where two corridors meet, such as a major station or neighborhood that most riders are going to. That could kind of be Greenlake or Fremont, although there are still a number of people going through there.

         Metro’s long-term plan promotes the 62 to RapidRide, with just a small straightening out around Greenlake. Is that ideal for a future with Roosevelt Station? I’m not sure, and the imbalance of the current route makes me wonder, as well as the hour-long milk-run quality of the entire route.

         RossB’s 62+71 could work if the routes were timed for same-stop transfers going east and west. That means the 62 would have to continue east of 15th to a common stop. So where should it terminate? 25th because there’s an express there? 35th because the semblance of density ends there? But the biggest obstacle is the political popularity of the 71’s tail. You’d have to figure out how much of that is because of 65th vs the north-south Wedgwood segment. RossB’s idea would preserve the 65th segment but would delete the north-south segment.

         One thing this restructure has shown is that there’s significant demand from northeast Seattle to the U-District in particular, and they don’t see U-Village as an adequate substitute. The routes do loop around to Campus Parkway which is just a couple blocks south of where they’re going, but that loop takes time. This suggests that the 71’s UWay-65th segment is a long-term need. People have also complained that there’s no longer a route from Lake City or 72-land to the U-District. I’m not sure about the 73 long-term since I’m least familiar with that route, but there was a push to reinstate it because of the Northgate transifer situation. But, when Roosevelt Station opens, having the 71 turn at 15th will be problematic. So should it then go west to Roosevelt and southeast to the Ave?

      7. Perhaps Metro could truncate some 62s on weekends, similarly to how the 372 ends at 130th on weekends. I suppose the problem is there’s no natural layover zone east of Greenlake P&R, but truncating at I-5 misses the key density of Roosevelt.

         That being said, I’m coming to like the 62 for its frequency despite its unreliability. For my family, it was the sugar coating on the bitter pill that was losing the 68 since we shop at Northgate and my spouse works at North Seattle College. Without frequent 62 service, the only reliable way to get to Northgate would be the 372-75, which involves a horrible transfer across Lake City Way.

      8. Which brings to mind yet another issue about the 62, which is that it’s unreliability somewhat undermines the benefit of its frequency. Between downtown, the Fremont Bridge, and Wallingford traffic, it is completely unpredictable when an eastbound route 62 bus along 65th St. is going to show up. OneBusAway helps some, but when planning any kind of trip that involves a transfer to the eastbound 62, it is a complete crapshoot how long one would need to wait. The 71, by contrast, coming only from the U-district, with no ship canal crossings, is much more reliable.

         I’m guessing a lot of the justification for running the 62 every 15 minutes all the way out to Sand Point is that Metro significantly over-estimated the number of people who would get transfer-phobia and ride the 62 all the way from Northeast Seattle to downtown vs. other options, such as transfers between Link and the 65/75/372. From what I’ve seen anecdotally, people are riding the 65/75/372 to/from Link (especially the 65), but very few people are slogging it out all the way downtown on the 62.

      9. “when planning any kind of trip that involves a transfer to the eastbound 62, it is a complete crapshoot how long one would need to wait.”

         It’s not a crapshoot: it’s 15 minutes. Several times I’ve tried that from the 45, 71, 73, and 372, and every time the 62 sailed past while I was waiting for the first bus to cross the street, or I was waiting to walk back across the street to the 62 stop. I finally gave up on that because if I add up all the walks and waits (7 min to Link, 5 min wait for Link, 7 min to 372 stop, 7 min wait for 372, 15 min wait for 62) it comes out to forty minutes of not even riding. Going west+south is better because the average wait is shorter.

10. Isn’t the 574 also being changed to serve Angle Lake station?

    I’m also surprised that there isn’t more of a focus on the new link station in the service changes. I think a good test of how well truncation of an express route that doesn’t go too far to Link would be to run route 157 to Angle Lake station, and increase the number of trips (which right now is abysmally low). If this ever becomes a priority, such a route would make a good all day route I feel.

    1. Angle Lake is only a mile further than SeaTac, and SeaTac is a major destination. Also, the roads don’t really allow a bus from Kent to get to the station without going around the long way. Since half the riders are going to the airport the bus might as well go to it. There’s also the stops on S 188th St which ST may still want to serve.

       1. I’m not saying that the 574 change makes any sense, I just remember a post on this blog taking about ST’s plan to do so. Maybe they had a change of plans.

       2. With the SeaTac international terminal expansion happening soon, it sure would be nice to have an additional Link stop closer to it.

11. How frequent will the 73 be on Sundays? Hourly, I’m guessing?

    Is there any possibility that Metro can be persuaded to run more 120s? The bus is very popular at night, when it only runs half-hourly.

    1. +1 Bump 30 minute service evenings and Sundays on Route 120 to 15 minutes service, and my life will be complete.

    2. If I had to guess, I would say every 30 minutes but daytime hours only (perhaps, 10 AM to 6 PM). I don’t think Metro would add a new run to their schedule with hourly frequency at this point unless it were absolutely essential for coverage, due to the lack of any other routes in the vicinity.

12. Aside from flipping the 106/107’s routings,
    what did Renton get, as they fall further and further ‘behind the curve’?
    [responding to trolling permitted]

    1. New connections to SE Seattle on the revised 106.

       But the city’s leadership has made amply clear that the only kind of transit they care about is commuter service to P&Rs.

    2. A one-seat ride through Rainier Valley. Renton and the valley are economically and culturally similar now, so there are probably a lot of people who shop in the valley or visit relatives or attend church there. It was also going to be more frequent, but did that get discarded?

       The 107’s routing is not like the current 106. The current 106 goes over south Beacon Hill via Myrtle Street to Georgetown. The new 107 will go to 15th Avenue South and then north to Beach Hill village and the station. 15th Avenue South is severely underserved with only the 60, yet it’s a transit-dependent area. It’s further from Beacon Avenue than it looks. I looked at an apartment on 15th just south of Spokane Street but I didn’t take it because it the only direct route was the 60 which ended at 9pm and it was a 20-minute walk to the 36. I even looked at walking down the hill via Columbian Way to the SODO busway, but that was at least twenty minutes if not longer and a hill. So more frequency on lower 15th would be welcome, and a one-seat ride to Rainier Beach Station, the Rainier Beach shopping area, and Renton may be appreciated too.

       1. I live on 15th. I love this proposal haha

       2. >> A one-seat ride through Rainier Valley. Renton and the valley are economically and culturally similar now, so there are probably a lot of people who shop in the valley or visit relatives or attend church there.

          I agree and think that is a very good point. In looking at the overview of service changes for the Southeast, it looks like they kept that in mind (http://metro.kingcounty.gov/programs-projects/se-seattle/).

          I think the challenge in general is that so far, this hasn’t translated into high ridership. The 107 only carries 1500 a day, so a Renton to Rainier Beach line (as promising as it is) has trouble getting riders. It probably didn’t help that getting to the 7 (and the high school) required looping around and serving Link first. Nor did the frequency. It is very difficult to make a connection (and most would have to make a connection, because Rainier Beach is not far up the valley) if one of the buses runs every 30 minutes at best.

          In general I would say the routes look a lot better now. Both the 106 and 107 go to Rainier Avenue first, then the station. It wouldn’t surprise me if just as many people transfer to the 7 as to Link. But more importantly, it goes to both in an efficient manner, and shares service along an important section. I’m sure there are people who simply take the first 106/107 south, and this will help a lot in that regard.

          Meanwhile, the north end of the 7 gets some help with crowding (via the 106), and the north end of the 107 looks like a winner. There should be plenty of ridership on these buses — which should help a lot. The 106 is supposed to run every 15 minutes, and the north end of the line should carry it even if the improved service in the south end doesn’t result in a lot more ridership initially.

       3. “The 107 only carries 1500 a day, so a Renton to Rainier Beach line (as promising as it is) has trouble getting riders.”

          The 107 is half-hourly at best, and it has a circuitous time-consuming routing between Renton and Rainier Beach. But that’s beside the point because it’s a coverage route. Its purpose is to serve the far south end of Beacon Hill, Rainier View, and Renton West Hill. Those are a long steep walk from the 106 or 101, where connecting roads even exist. Extending the 107 to 15th Ave S is like adding another coverage route but without the overhead of a separate route. Its primary purpose is not to be a frequency pair with the 106 or for Renton to Beacon Hill trips; those are just side benefits.

          Also, Renton is a ridership black hole. It’s not just the 107, but the 101 and 106 also have mediocre ridership off-peak. But the only way to turn that around is to improve the bus service and wait for Rentonites’ attitudes to change. I also like the idea of extending the 106 to the Renton Highlands, replacing the 105. That’s also similar to Rainier Valley, and would probably generate some trips between them.

13. Might be a good time for Seattle Public School headquarters lobby to update their Metro system map. Was there recently, walked up to a poster sized Metro route map hanging on the wall, and saw the routes 174, 358, 233, 230, 253, 140, etc. No Central Link. No Rapid Rides. The date on it said 2002.

    1. Buying Oran’s map would make a lot of sense. It is focused on Seattle (unlike most of Metro’s maps) and already flags every high school and college in the area. It is also simply a great map.

14. Not listed in the post, ST has tweeted that they will be adding 15 more 545 trips in September:
    https://twitter.com/SoundTransit/status/740224733409607680

    1. Quoting the original tweet:

       “Hey @SoundTransit, can you fix the thing where every other 545 is early and half-empty and the rest are late and standing-room-only?”

       I’ve definitely noticed this – c. December 2015, I remember there being a hole between 9:20 and 9:36 at Bellevue and Olive where you basically should stay home and have another coffee, since the 9:27 545 was always late. I’m curious as to why, though: is this because some runs ‘originate’ at the Seattle side, and thus the driver always starts on time, whereas others ‘originate’ at the Redmond side, and any delay going west translates into a delayed start of the eastbound route?

15. I’m very happy to see the Sunday frequency bump on the 65/67- it’s a big step towards having a 7-day-a-week frequent transit network in NE Seattle.

16. I appreciate they are finally fixing the screwup with the 67. Too bad it took months to fix what was a completely obvious problem from day 1.

17. Is there a bus from Discovery Park to Shorewood High School in Shoreline?

    1. No.

       This will likely get deleted due to being off topic for the subject at hand.

       You’ll want to be thinking about how far you are willing to walk vs transfer between routes.

    2. No but now there is a bus that goes from Kenmore to Overlake. Since Kenmore is getting left out of ST3 light rail it’s nice to know they have multiple bus to rail options. Whether it’s Kenmore to Overlake, Kenmore to UW, or whatever routes metro comes up with. Perhaps Kenmore to Northgate and/or 145th or even Kenmore to Lynnwood.

       1. There is already a route 244 from Kenmore to Overlake, so I wonder what’s different about the 243 that justifies creating a new route for it. The 244 does take surface streets with bus stops all the way, so maybe the 243 is an “express” variant of it, but peak-hour traffic is bad enough that, even an “express” route would still take quite awhile.

    3. RapodRide E to the 33 for an hour and a half trip is what is most likely your best bet.

       If you are willing to walk some distance you might want to try something like E to the 44 or 40 and walk south on the bike path to Government Way, but it’s doubtful it will save you much time due to the longer walk.

       1. Your best bet in that regard would be to take the 44 to the end, then walk across the locks. That is a lot less walking, and fairly pleasant, too. The locks are nice, then you walk through Commodore Park and onto Commodore Way, which is a quiet street before entering the main park. Government Way, on the other hand, is not very pleasant walking. It isn’t a horrible street, but it is an arterial. Like you said, it is also a long ways (and it will feel longer, as it is not especially interesting).

       2. I guess I was thinking they were headed to the park interpretive center, but your method works.

       3. Wait? You thought I was saying to cross the Ballard Bridge?

          No, definitely don’t cross the Ballard Bridge. I was thinking of taking the 44 to the end of the line at the Ballard Locks, using the pathway across the locks, then continue up the hill on the bike path that is at the end of a dead end street just south of the locks. It’s all signed as a continuous path across the locks and up the hill all the way to Government Way near the entrance to the park.

    4. It’s best to ask specific trip questions on the open threads, which are every Sunday and the midweek News Roundup. But regarding Magnolia, it’s not very well connected to the rest of the city, or to Aurora where you can catch a fast E to Shoreline. Taking the 33 downtown and transferring to the E is the simplest and most straightforward although it’s backtracking. Walking to 15th Ave W you could take the D to its northern end, transfer to the 40 (or walk 1.5 miles over a hill) and transfer to the E, There’s also a bus from Magnolia to the U-District, 31, which crosses Aurora at 35th, But that’s under the Aurora Bridge so you’d have to walk uphill to 46th Street where the station is. But you could see the troll eating a Volkswagen along the way.The 31 doesn’t run evenings or Sundays.

    5. It also depends on what day you plan to do this. The 304 might help shave some minutes off the trip to get to the 33, but it only runs on weekdays and the schedule is very limited.

18. What’s the motive for having the 47/10 running on Pike and everything else on Pine? Seems like it would be beneficial to consolidate everything on Pine, so outbound 47/10 would go left on 8th, then left on Bellevue. It seems weird to have just several blocks of asymmetrical couplets like that.

    1. Ideally Pine Street would have an eastbound transit lane. That was considered when Westlake Park was built and Pine Street was reopened. (It was closed between 4th and 5th during the first years of the park.) But that was a sensitive time when the city was trying to rescue downtown from decline and rebuild the retail core. So the city was promoting shopping and parking, and the Roosevelt hotel renovation was part of it. A transit lane on Pine would disrupt access to the Roosevelt’s delivery entrance or loading zone, or so it was claimed. Perhaps if the city tried harder it could find a way to install the transit lane without putting the Roosevelt out of business. Now that BAT lanes have become common, which allow cars to travel one block for right turns, maybe that would solve the Roosevelt’s delivery problems.

       1. Sure, a bus lane would be nice, but if they have no problem moving the 11 and 49 onto Pine, why not move the 47 and 10 there as well to keep all the buses on the same street?

       2. That would force them to turn left-right-left in a few blocks. Each turn slows them down, especially when there’s fraffic.

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20. While a midday trip is good I’m not sure I get the “imply a 10.5 hour workday” statement, as many Sounder riders have a decent walk to and from the station. I would expect a not-too-small amount of people who use Sounder one way and the bus the other way. You can have an arrival in the 9 AM hour by taking the bus.

    1. All my Sounder trips are one-way because I can only take it from downtown in the afternoon or (rarely) in the morning. Sounder’s schedule does not allow me to take it back northbound, so I take a bus from Tacoma, Kent, or Auburn. I’ve never been on Sounder North because its schedule is even more limited. I’ve seen the view from Cascades when I used to go to Vancouver a lot, so I have no urgent need to see it from Sounder. When I do go to Snohomish County, it’s usually easier to take a bus from the U-District, and for Lynnwood it’s the only way.

       1. “easier to take a bus from the U-District”

          from downtown or the U-District

21. “Route 10 will stay on Pike, meaning both routes will have signalized left turns into Capitol Hill and buses will no longer make the unsignalized right turn from Bellevue onto Pine.”

    So is the last part incorrect? Is it talking about the eastbound left turn from Pike to Bellevue rather than the westbound right turn from Bellevue to Pine? That would answer the question of whether all buses will continue to converge westbound at the Pine & Bellevue stop.

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