Bruce Englehardt contributed to this post.
The shuttle service for Friday’s 6 pm game against the #7 Stanford Cardinal will be significantly different from the Metro-operated shuttles that serve Saturday Husky games. First, they won’t be operated by Metro, which is busy using its whole fleet and workforce covering its regular routes. Second, there will be only six places served by park & ride shuttles, which will be different from the locations served by the Saturday Metro game day shuttles. Third, you have to make a reservation for the shuttle by midnight Thursday.
Shuttles are available at:
East – Bellevue College – starting at 2pm
East – Overlake Christian Church, 9900 Willows Rd, Redmond – starting at 2pm
North – Northwest Outpatient Medical Center, 10330 Meridian Ave N, Seattle – starting at 2:30pm
North – Shoreline Community College – starting at 2:30pm
Southwest – Highline College – starting at 2pm
South – Christian Faith Center, 33645 20th Ave S, Federal Way – starting at 2pm
Post-game pick-up locations are different from drop-off locations.
Several Metro buses serving the UW campus will be re-routed from 2 pm on during game day. However, there will be a free shuttle circling between Campus Parkway and UW Station throughout the afternoon and evening, coming every 7-8 minutes. Check all Metro re-routes here.
The best way to ride in style to the game is Link Light Rail, which drops you off right in front of Husky Stadium. Capacity and service will be amped up Friday, and it will be the first Husky football game for which you can ride from Angle Lake Station. Taking 6 minutes from Westlake and 13 minutes from the International District, while coming every 6-10 minutes, light rail is both the most frequent and fastest way to get to Husky Stadium. Most trains will be three cars Friday. Board the third (rear) car for the most spacious ride.
A note on fares (excluding the privately-run shuttles): Metro paper transfers are not accepted on light rail, and light rail paper tickets are not accepted on Metro or ST Express buses. To get transfer credit, you have to get the ORCA card. (If you already have a Husky Card with a U-Pass on it, you are good to go.) The $5 ORCA card fee will be paid off within two transfers, so you may as well get one and start using it. ORCA vending machines are located at every light rail and Sounder train station, as well as at a number of grocery stores and transfer centers. Using the ORCA card will automatically get you the lowest fare for your trip, as long as you remember to tap on and tap off.
Again, Metro is rerouting everything father from UW station. This time it’s to 55th/Ravenna (route 30 lives on, and this time it’s every route!).
Is Stevens way that jammed during games anyway? It’s not a very good Link connection point, but it’s better than a mile walk.
The deal with forced Link transfers was that every UW route would be frequent and go near UW station, and that would make up for the transfer (and my three-seat rides becoming four-seat rides).
But realistically, if I was going between UW and Northgate on Friday (I’m not, thank God), I either have a four-seat ride with a mile walk, or a five-seat ride (which is absolutely insane).
The frequent shuttle between UW Station and Campus Parkway serves all the re-routed routes.
“Frequent shuttle” my a$$. I tried this trip a couple of Saturdays ago. The 73 dumped us out on the Ave, no shuttles were anywhere to be found, and we had to walk. To add insult, buses that don’t terminate at Husky Stadium sailed merrily through the “congestion” on Pacific. Only buses that were supposed to take us to the light rail station stopped short, for no reason that I could see.
This is the first time I’ll be caught up on the northeast Seattle gap. The 75 and 372 are doing a 30 on the slow meandering 55th-Ravenna-20th-50th routing. Oddly the 65 is rerouted in Lake City far away from the game. Its southbound is regular; i.e., on Stevens Way. The problem with the gap is more than just the buses taking a slow meandering course, it’s that they end up further west than they normally are, thus necessetting the shuttle transfer. And 7 1/2 minutes, that’s ridiculous. Normal rush hour on Pacific Street has a bus every 2-3 minutes. In the last restructure Metro saturated Pacific Street because of the gap between UW Station and 45th. And now they think a shuttle every 7 1/2 minutes is adequate? When both rush hour riders and football fans are descending on the area? The workaround for northeast Seattle may be to transfer to the 62 and stay away from the U-District.
+100. I think this is wholly unacceptable for NE Seattle riders.
Yes yes! Not just that, but another transfer penalty, making it a minimum 3-seat ride from the south (4-seat ride for most, and even a 5-seat ride from some, not even obscure or distant, suburbs, including the Arbor Heights neighborhood of Seattle). Yes, Metro’s brilliant planning is normalizing the 5-seat ride. 2021 can’t come fast enough.
Route 76 is an option, if you are willing to risk I-5 traffic near UW.
Yes, and so is route 74. I think for most normal users, that is definitely the safest bet since if two transfer penalties don’t already eliminate the time savings from Link, the complexity of such a trip may make the 2-5 minutes of potential time savings no longer worth the effort. The other issue is that the 76 and 74 are only available going northbound up to 6:40 or 7:20 (depending on the route) in this scenario, since they are one-way commuter expresses.
+1000 also. Its either a 5 seat ride trying not to backtrack or long 2-3 seat rides overshooting where you want to go.
Ride sequences like take a 41 up to Northgate and back down south using the 67 or east using the 75. Or the Lake City 41 and the 73 down, or the Lake City 41 to the 372, to the 62, or the Lake City 41 to the 65 going east then south. Sheer length of the ride as bad as the transfer penalty.
I don’t understand why the buses are vacating Stevens Way either. (Except the lucky 65.) Is that were all the P&R shuttles will be? It better be, to justify these large detours.
From my recollection, the shuttles are all lined up along the right lane if southbound Montlake boulevard. It’s a bit unusual seeing 1.25 solid miles of parked buses in a lane where there supposedly is no political will to make it a bus lane.
Montlake Boulevard gets backed up almost every afternoon. Sometimes it only goes halfway from the station to 45th, and occasionally it also backs up 45th in U Village. Seeing that I can kind of understand why Metro doesn’t want to put regular buses there and how there’s too many cars for a transit lane, because there’s no other road from notheast Seattle to 520 east of 15th. It’s not like Aurora where you can divert to Greenwood or Meridian or 15th NW. The event shuttles are transporting thousands of people and are a stopgap until ST2 Link opens, so I can understand why they get a parking lane, especially since they keep more cars away.
Buses on Montlake in a bus lane would also transport thousands of people, would have a two-minute rapid connection to the Link station, would advertise fast bus service to the people stuck in traffic, and bus lanes on Montlake would just be a stopgap until 2021 when U-district station opens.
U-Link has made zero difference in traffic congestion around Husky Stadium or on the Montlake Bridge. Does ST have any traffic counts to show that the supposed thousands of people every day who cross under the ship canal on Link trains have taken any vehicles off the Montlake Bridge? Vehicle counts on the I-5 ship canal bridge are exactly the same after U-Link opened as they were before it opened.
Chad – are you insinuating that the passenger counts are wrong? I’ve been on those packed trains; I know they’re real.
(And if you could give a link to those I-5 counts, that’d be nice. Remember, though, that it’s probably more inconvenient to get from Snohomish County to Husky Stadium than to continue straight downtown, so I wouldn’t expect many changes there yet.)
Is U-Link supposed to reduce traffic congestion around Husky Stadium? Regardless of how many cars are on the street, tens of thousands of riders are under the street. If you take one train full at rush hour, which we’ll conservatively call 325 people at UW Station, how much space would it take if they all had cars on Montlake Blvd and Pacific Street at 1.3 occupancy? Shall we say equal to the worst traffic jam day? Now how do you fit those cars in addition to the existing cars on those streets? Do you build two more boulevards? Where? So the train is being very productive. It’s like another freeway but underground. Its job isn’t to reduce traffic congestion but to give people a way to bypass the congestion. And the fact that it reaches only into a far corner of north Seattle means more people are busing to it or driving, who wouldn’t be if North Link were open.
“Its job isn’t to reduce traffic congestion but to give people a way to bypass the congestion.”
Right. And without that bus lane, it gets you around the Montlake cut congestion. Then, to get around the Montlake boulevard congestion from UW station to 45th, you effectively walk part of the way, then take a slower bus path. Without the bus lane, the problem is half solved, and those who don’t like walking a half mile to Stevens are right back in their cars.
Once again, light rail doesn’t solve traffic congestion for those who continue to drive alone. Light rail solves traffic congestion for those who ride light rail, at least for the part of the trip that they are on light rail.
Traffic volumes on SOV streets may see a temporary dip when a light rail line opens, but induced demand brings the traffic back pretty quickly. Available space draws cars.
Bus lanes help more people get through traffic congestion. UW and WSDOT should allow more of them. SDOT should be less squeamish about employing them, too. Light rail bypasses bus-lane squeamishness.
As much as the No on RP1 campaign exhalts the beauty of bus rapid transit (while opposing the only real-life proposal to build it), I’ve never seen any of them support an actual real-life bus-lane proposal that has been offered up by a real-life government body. Plans on napkins don’t count.
All of this unnecessary inconvenience so that the Pac-12 can make more television $$$ showing the game on a Friday night. Northeast Seattle is going to be an epic gridlock. Is there any way for the city of Seattle to put an end to this? Make the Huskies play at C-Link if they are going to schedule weeknight games?
Friday is more lucrative than the weekend? Do people not watch football if it’s on the weekend? I thought football fans arranged their schedules around the games.
No, Joe is right. This is a national game, and won’t have any competition. If it was played on a Saturday, folks on the east coast might not tune in. So, yes, it is all about the money. Not only is it bad for fans that attend the game, but it is bad for everyone who happens to live in the area (or be effected by the traffic problems, which is just about everyone). The same thing happens with basketball as well (terrible times for the games) but that isn’t quite as bad, since Hec Ed is much smaller.
Playing downtown would be better in some ways, worse in others. The one good thing about Husky Stadium is that a very large number of people walk to the game. I don’t know the numbers, but I would guess somewhere around 20 to 30 thousand. If they played downtown, you would be lucky to get 2 or 3. While Link would help with that, it could still overwhelm it, especially since Link is still sharing the tunnel with buses (it really is the worst of both worlds from a capacity standpoint).
4th Avenue South gets backed up too whenever there’s a game at CLink or Safeco. I’m surprised south Seattle residents haven’t made a huge massive fuss about their buses getting bogged down practically every week whenever there’s an event.
Moving weeknight games to downtown just shifts game traffic to downtown. It’ll move the problwm, not fix it
The TV contract that the Pac-12 conference has with ESPN and Fox Sports requires each school to host a weekday game a minimum amount of times over the length of the contract. Some schools in the conference have no problems hosting these games while the UW does and has told the conference that it will only host the minimum amount of weekday games that is required. The UW had a Thursday night game against UCLA at home several years ago so it is not a yearly occurrence.
I find it funny that some of you want these weekday games moved to CenturyLink Field yet when the Seahawks have a Monday or Thursday night games you complain about those games. Well when you have major league sports teams you are going to have games scheduled at awkward times to fulfil TV requirements. It is an inconvenience but if you want to be major city then you will have these kinds of events.
And just a heads up. The Seahawks do have Monday night home game on November 7th and a Thursday night game on December 15th with kickoff times at 530 pm. And although it is not likely for this season but if the Mariners do make the post season those playoff games could have start times ranging from noon to 830 pm.
I do love me some Seahawks football. But do the buses just give up a mile short of the stadium on Seahawks game days?
We can’t be a major city without these kinds of events? The employers would all move away if we didn’t have any professional or collegiate sports teams? Why should the city turn itself into knots so that the team owners can line their pockets?
A major city has employers like Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon etc but it also has major sports teams that its citizens can enjoy and those teams are no different then the opera and other activities that are scheduled for them. . You also make it sound like these games scheduled at around the rush hour happen every week because they don’t.
The Huskies have this one game and as posted they have told the Pac-12 conference that they will only host these games at the minimum amount required by the TV contract. The Seahawks have the 2 games this season. So in 52 weeks of the year with 5 works days a week that adds up to 260 work days in a year you have 3 work days in 2016 where you have a major sports event starting between 530 and 6 pm.. Is it an inconvenience? Yes but it is not like it happens every week as this year it is only 3 days.
Thanks, Jeff. Great explanation.
This is only the second weekday night game the UW has hosted at Husky Stadium since WWII — or to put it another way, since 1945 the UW has played as many weeknight games as the Seahawks will just this year. (The Dawgs played another in Century Link whilst their stadium was being renovated.)
There are so many things that happen in a large city that please some while inconveniencing others–but that’s part of the life of the city. Music festivals, street fairs/farmers markets, sporting events, running/cycling events, food truck rodeos, fireworks shows…they all are part of why city living is so enjoyable for many of us even if we individually don’t care for or attend some of them. Two games in 71 years isn’t the end of the world; in a handful of years when U District, Roosevelt and Northgate stations open bypassing the area will be no problem whatsoever.
The Stadium District has a dedicated busway. Granted, the buses have to fight their way through a bunch of other traffic outside the busway, but UW has nothing like the transit tunnel + busway. One Link station is not going to deal with the tangled mess around Montlake.
“…no different then the opera…”
Wouldn’t we be a more interesting society if we can get 30,000 to attend the opera?
Festivals are public events, and many of them are free. Operas and other arts performances are run by nonprofits that have to raise sponsorships/donations to cover their costs. Professional sports teams are for-profit companies, and UW football although nonprofit is a fundraising mechanism and the UW insisted on renovating Husky Stadium rather than playing all its games at CLink for money and prestige reasons. The problem is their negative externalities. When I patronize other for-profit businesses like shops or restaurants or book readings, all the activity is in their building and the impact on the community (e.g., people coming and going) is minimal. But sports events tie up entire parts of the city and make a mockery of bus routes. Why aren’t these companies paying millions of dollars impact fees per year to compensate the public for these externalities? That would be enough to put a bus tunnel under 4th Avenue South for instance, and would go a long way toward comprehensive transit in northeast Seattle.
You make it sound like these games starting around the rush hours are a daily or weekly event and they are not and there only 3 of these games in 2016.
But then I should not be surprised by these posts because there are those who complain about the 2 marathons that take place in Seattle each year and others who complain about the Seafair Torchlight Parade and gosh knows any other events that might disrupt transit.
You know there have been rush hour Seahawk games for years and people survived as they did on the day of the Seahawks Super Bowl parade and they will survive this Friday as well as the 2 Seahawks games coming on a Monday and a Thursday.
Of course unplanned demonstrations are also a problem because no planning can be done for them versus the game this Friday and it seems that these demonstrations are a worse disruption then a scheduled event that can planned for.
On the other hand, part of the student culture of UW is their athletics. If you didn’t want to go to a Division I, Power Five Conference school, you could go to Evergreen, UC San Diego, NYU, or many other schools.
Having an on campus stadium helps build school spirit and camaraderie, and having the football team do well has been proven to create a “halo effect” to drive alumni donations to non football activities. This is especially true in a smaller market, as UCLA can get away with playing in the Rose Bowl, 20 miles from campus, because there are plenty of alumni and interested fans in the area to fill it up. Being one of the flagship schools of the state of Washington (along with WSU), and being a game between two Top Ten teams, the Pac 12 conference wants to maximize the number of eyeballs on this, especially since last year people complained that Stanford’s running back Christian McCaffrey didn’t get the Heisman because no one could see his games because they were on too late in the evening. You could schedule the game for 7:30 PM PDT, which is when the Friday night game between Cal and Oregon will be held later this season, but now you have neighborhood impacts to contend with when the game lets out at midnight, and there aren’t any appreciable benefits to allowing more special service to be operated. And, from a Pac 12 promotion standpoint, you are not going to have the East Coast see the top players in your conference because they will not stay up until 3 am to watch your game.
Try getting into/out of Madison Park during the marathon. Or the Obliteride. Or the Blue Angels’ shows when everybody goes to the beach to watch them and then leaves all at once. That’s four days off the top of my head right there, every year, where special events bollix up an entire neighborhood…and it’s not the only one. Most neighborhoods are affected at one time or another by several of these events. It’s awesome trying to get around during a state visit, or the Torchlight parade, or the Pride parade, or the Capitol Hill Block Party, or whatever 5/10k or bicycling event may be occurring at any given time. Ask folks in Lower QA or who have to go through there what they think of Bumbershoot, Bite of Seattle, or Folklife traffic. Ask residents of Genesee/Seward Park/Columbia City how much they love boat race/air show traffic. Too bad if you don’t like one or the other–there’s certainly more than one event I have absolutely no interest in but that is a price I pay for having access to all the things I do enjoy in the city–even when it messes my commute or other travel plans up a couple of days a year.
Husky Stadium has been at that current location since 1920, and the UW has been playing football on campus since 1889. Perhaps the Seahawks/Sounders — who received a huge amount of public money for their stadium, unlike the UW — should have moved to Montlake. The UW does a far better job than ANY ONE of the other major teams or events in encouraging transit and shuttle use; approximately 20,000 people avail themselves of those means of transportation to games and that will probably be even higher with the Link station there. The UW has been encouraging this for longer than most of us have been alive – I have a game program from a 1956 game my mother and her father went to that has a map showing where Seattle Transit buses were staged after the game. The UW athletic department DOES pay for the various shuttles and additional bus service they use for game traffic. Off the top of my head only Seafair also runs transit shuttles to their main event.
If you can’t deal with the inconvenience of the second weekday night game since 1945 — or 2 out of approximately 18,500 weeknights since then — I don’t know what to tell you. Perhaps the city isn’t the place to be.
1. The parades, protests, marathons, etc,. are only once or twice a year each. Most of them are put on by the community for the community, and the community wants them enough to pay sponsorships since ticket sales don’t cover the expenses or the events are free.
2. The protests and parades are free speech which is protected in this country: the city can’t refuse them.
3. Professional sports and UW football are not once or twice a year each, they’re a season of ten-ish games a year.Professional sports are for-profit entities that have a slick marketing campaign to convince people to go rah-rah as if it’s for their city, and they have an antitrust exemption to prevent competition, and we go rah-rah for that? UW football is nonprofit but has some of these characteristics.
4. People have played soccer-like games for millenia, and the Olympics had individual sports for millenia, but organized team sports with persistent city teams come out of the 1800s and originated as factory/company teams, which were organized by companies to promote the qualities of cooperation — to make people better team players in the work place and respect the corporate ladder of authority. Gradually company teams became city teams.
5. I went to UW for the education quality, in-state tuition, and urban location. The idea that I should have to go to Evergreen or out-of-state because of football is ridiculous.
6. Amateur sports are valuable and I have nothing against most UW sports, I just don’t like how the football is handled. If I had started wrestling earlier and the UW had it at the time I might have been on the wrestling team.
7. Yes, a weeknight UW game is rare. Most of my wrath is against the professional sports companies and their negative externalities.
8. The UW is doing a great job promoting transit and non-car access to its campus — with the exception of the Link station location. But the station was located there for Husky games, so at least the station will have a chance to live up to its potential tomorrow.
1. Once or twice per year each–until you add them up. Seafair, the Capitol Hill Block Party, Bumbershoot, Folklife (I think) all charge admission. Marathons and the like all charge entry fees. Most used to be free–they no longer are and hence are no different than a sporting event in that regard. ALL of these things are for the community, unless you want to be like our esteemed City Council and determine that the hundreds of thousands of sports fans (most of us who enjoy many of these other events as well) aren’t really part of the community until a championship is won and they all want their photo ops. Certainly there are some “anti-sports” people who will trumpet Link’s ridership numbers when they reach records due to sporting events.
2. I wouldn’t even consider “refusing” them, but they are certainly subject to regulation (I don’t agree with that, BTW, but parades and the like certainly require a permit). Blocking off whole square blocks of downtown or miles of freeway for the authoritarian prime minister of China, for example, is assuredly not protected speech.
3. True, and not going away (UW has 7 home games most years–transit impact is somewhat minimized by not typically occurring on weekdays/peak hours).
4. Also true; not understanding the purpose of the point as it pertains to this post however.
5. Agreed. That was an odd comment.
6. I don’t always agree with it either; it is what it is and it does allow other athletes in non-revenue sports to participate. None of those sports (except men’s basketball) would exist otherwise. If you enjoy the Olympics you can to a large extent thank college football, at least until some other method of funding those sports domestically is found.
7. Fair enough, although the topic is the UW game. As for the other, how many “companies” are actually contributors to fixing the transportation problems they create? Is Boeing, for example, paying for the Paine Field diversion? They famously do not pay taxes, so my guess is no. Most of us do not benefit directly from what most private entities do (think about a long-term lane blockage due to construction of a building most of us can’t afford to live in); in aggregate hopefully we do. Singling out “sports companies” is NIMBYism–you don’t like them so you don’t want them screwing up your commute. Again, fair enough–as long as you recognize that if you like any other event that affects traffic/transit the argument is hypocritical.
8. The station is there for the medical center, which accounts for nearly 50% of the UW’s income and thousands of staff and visitors daily. It’s next to the stadium because that’s where it disrupted the UW’s operations the least. People have been attending Husky football games there for 97 years and without Link they would continue to do so. Based on my conversations with athletic department staff they are very glad it’s there–but life would’ve gone on without it the 7 days a year the stadium fills up. It is a HUGE benefit to the large number of medical center staff, faculty, students, and patients.
None of this is meant to be personal, just differing opinions from someone who enjoys different things that city life has to offer, including sports (actually I enjoy many of the other events I mention as well). You’re one of the best and most thoughtful posters on here and I enjoy your insights.
“Folklife (I think) … charge[s] admission.”
Northwest Folklife is a free festival, but it suggests a $5 a day donation.
The comment about “going to Evergreen” was in relation to UW athletics and UW being a Division I school. Athletics are an integral part of the UW student life experience and help attract both in state students and out of state students. Arguably collegiate athletics should be played first for the benefit of the student athletes and the students who cheer them on.
Thus, moving events to Centurylink Field on the rare Fridays that this occurs is inappropriate. Note that the Apple Cup usually occurs on Black Friday (day after Thanksgiving) and causes little to no consternation because many people are out of town that weekend. Thus UW gets fewer Friday games than they normally would as a member of the Pac-12.
I’m very surprised there isn’t a concise map of the bus reroutes, especially for the commuters from campus that won’t see their bus on campus at all.
Yeah, reading the drivers’ cards is difficult for me and I’ve been following bus routes closely for decades. After studying it a bit I can visualize it because I know the area and recognize segments previous routes used, But for an occasional rider to read that cryptic text and understand it enough to make optimal decisions — I’m not sure about that. I’m most concerned about people in U-Village and Laurelhurst — everything east of 20th and south of 55th. Will there be signs on all the bus stops, or will people be waiting hours for a bus that never comes? Shouldn’t there maybe be a Laurelhurst shuttle?
Metro generally does a grade D- job with these reroute notifications. Metro is doing a better than usual job here with the alert right on the front page of the website, but for construction related reroutes, the way you find out is seeing the sign on the bus stop (which there sometimes even isn’t).
Well, I posted the comment on the Metro blog post. Since this happens several times every year I’m surprised there isn’t a stock map available ready to go to show people where to walk to and catch the shuttles.
I am too – the UW used to send a map like that out to season ticket holders but I haven’t paid attention for many years as we normally tailgate. For a normal game you would always catch your shuttle at the same place you were dropped off, and that didn’t change from game to game. These stadium-U District shuttles on Friday are a one-time only deal for this game so I’m not sure about them.
The UW’s football transportation site is very informative about all means of travel to and from games (with a special section specifically for tomorrow night’s game) – they definitely recommend transit and specifically Link. There’s also a map showing where Uber/Lyft pickup and drop-offs are; bicycle and boat information, etc. They do an outstanding job particularly when compared to any other major event in this town.
Bus re-routes are Metro’s thing, and to be honest except for an hour or two around the end of a game, Montlake is fully open and usable (I can see it well from my seats and have for years). Friday night is a new thing for all of us, so it’s unclear how it will differ in practice. It will be well after rush hour when the game ends. Honestly, I expect people to be as resilient as they are during other events, major construction, or the like, and alter their travel patterns as necessary.
This happens at every UW home game, but to occur during the Friday rush hour is unusually ridiculous. My bus, the 73, is one of the worst affected, but that’s par for the 73, which has repeated indignities placed on it. They promised a faster overall trip by combining the 73 with the light rail (it isn’t faster), but adding these extra obstacles just negates all the promises and makes the trip an endless hassle. Does anyone have a problem with this??
I do. I think it’s unacceptable to anchor your system around an ostensibly reliable transfer, then force all of those thousands of commuters to walk a mile or take a 3-seat ride so that recreational sports can have better TV ratings. Those games belong at the CLink or on Saturdays, and I wish we could legislate that somehow.
The worst affected are the 75 and 372. The 73 goes straight south to its normal stop. The other two go west, away from the UW Station destination, and they take slow meandering paths on top of that. Normally you get off these routes on Stevens Way and walk five minutes to the station. Now you’re going west, taking ten extra minutes to do so, and waiting for a 7 1/2 minute shuttle.
Okay, this is one thing that I don’t miss about living & working up there. Enjoy the circus. Go team?
Here’s an idea.
Dedicated bus lanes throughout
No more special shuttles and their parking needs.
Add service for games.
The end
Or, maybe just ban all parking on and near UW for a day?
Tens of thousands walk to the game, thousands more take Link or shuttle buses, so only a small number of drivers create traffic havoc that causes huge hassles for all others. Eliminate those and you have just the normal weekday traffic mess.
And thereby eliminate tailgating??? WHY DO YOU HATE AMERICA???
;)
Maybe ULink could run some bar cars!
Maybe someone will come up with a non-car equivalent to tailgating.
Taco Trucks with Beer Garden Fences on Every Corner!!!
heh heh heh…we love tailgating and y’all are welcome to stop by and have a beer anytime you want. Tailgating actually spaces out traffic as most of us show up hours before a Saturday game when there is little or no traffic, and many of us stay after to let the traffic clear out.
That said, because of Friday’s start time our group is all taking Link, so we won’t be in your way.
(Glenn–I’ve always thought having food trucks around would be a great idea. The UW actually does have an alternative behind the stadium called the Zone, with food/beer/wine/TVs for those who would like to “tailgate” but ride the shuttles or transit.)
Unfortunately the City of Seattle and NE Seattle neighborhoods didn’t get a voice when the UW and Pac-12 signed the contract with the cable networks to have night games. Maybe the UW consulted with the city, but I doubt the city had much they could do.
The UW went through a mandatory major transportation plan process with the City when the stadium expanded in 1987 (it’s actually a little smaller now after the renovation). It’s why there are so many shuttles to various places throughout the county and additional runs on several in-city routes around game times, all paid for by those of us who attend games and donate. Again, this is only the 2nd weekday night game since 1945; nobody cares much about Saturday day service as compared to Saturday night service–night games on Saturdays likely affect far fewer people on transit than day games do.
Although I realize some of the bus routes were changed/shortened/deleted when the UW Station opened, and I feel for anyone who was negatively affected by this, I’m having a hard time feeling too sorry for others who are unhappy about this one evening game, especially when you’re saying that it should have been relocated to CenturyLink Field.
Those of us who work downtown or south of downtown, or who live south of downtown or in West Seattle, have to deal with this on a regular basis in the summer, with Mariners and Sounders games; not to mention Seahawks games played on Monday or Thursday in the fall and early winter. Mid-afternoon Mariners games that let out right around the time people are getting out happen at least once a month for six months, and are an especial pain. Last Wednesday’s game with the Toronto Blue Jays, with the influx of fans from BC, was one of the worst traffic days we’ve had in awhile.
No, I don’t think this should be relocated to C-Link. We’ve borne the brunt of traffic problems due to sporting events for years, and I feel like it’s someone else’s turn just this once.
Of course it’d be better if Huskies games were held on Saturday as usual. I just don’t think the Friday ones should be held at C-Link.
I see a lot of comments here about how events happen in a city, and we just have to deal with them. I agree with this, but that’s totally off point. My point is that Metro is actually doing a poor job of dealing with this particular event, which by the way was not just Friday night but during every home game. People use transit on Saturdays too.
it is my understanding that when there is a Seahawks game, for instance, Metro doesn’t just give up and dump everyone out of their buses a mile short of the stadium. All transit continues to run normally, though slower. That isn’t the case with the Huskies home games. Nearly all the buses that were redirected to terminate at the light rail station this year are rerouted well away from the station during Huskies home games. Arguably that is actually when the buses are most needed around Husky Stadium. I realize that Montlake Blvd is crowded at these times, but it’s crowded every rush hour and the buses more or less cope. I think Metro should formulate a better plan than what they have now.
I agree completely with this, Christopher. Many years of watching (and dealing with) game day traffic tells me that Montlake is not atypically horrendous (for a rush hour) immediately before games, and is pretty free-flowing during them. Where the re-routing issue comes up is following the games, where to minimize the length of traffic impacts on the surrounding communities the major streets become contraflow away from the stadium for an hour or so. This would seem to be an opportunity to allow people to transfer from Link to those game day shuttles since they are all leaving the area, but there is an additional cost as the UW has to pay for all of them and they charge $5 to ride (even season ticket holders, who used to be free). As this is the first year of Link service to games perhaps something like this can be considered in the future.
If you’re headed through the area via Link near when a game ends, several truncated routes wait nearby to fill and then head out immediately. The 65 and 75 have always done this and I think other routes do as well.
Just a high level, philosophical question, useful to think about for any big event.
You have a fixed service (buses to Link), going up against a flexible service (cars, shuttles). Why does the fixed service have to flex? Isn’t the idea of the flexible service that it is flexible?
Its a bit like fitting the big rock, the little rock and the sand in a box. You don’t put the sand in box first, you put the big rock first, fit the little rock against the big rock and sand after.
@baselle,
I completely agree. My feeling is that, if UW wants to have parking at its games, SPD should only allow cars out of the parking lots if they can be guaranteed not to interfere with transit service. If private vehicle operators are stuck on campus into the next day, that’s a learning experience for next time and maybe they’ll be motivated to walk/bike/bus/train/watch the game from home.