Everett Transit has been preparing for a major face-lift for one of the city’s main transit corridors, North Broadway, between Downtown Everett and the Everett Community College campus. Originally slated for this year, the project has been pushed back into 2018 while additional design work is completed.
The North Broadway project will add 24 bus bulbs on Broadway between 41st Street and Tower Street, allowing buses to stop in-street, as well as new shelters and garbage cans at the bus stops themselves. Most of the North Broadway corridor is used by Everett Transit route 7, with a handful of stops shared with Community Transit routes 201 and 202 and inter-city express service from Skagit Transit and Island Transit. Two major stops, at 34th Street near Everett Station and at Tower Street near Everett Community College, will be moved to nearby intersections that have signaled crosswalks to reduce potential vehicle-pedestrian collisions (though it is still legal to cross at an unmarked crosswalk).
During construction in the spring and summer of next year, Everett Transit says to expect some delays for buses during daytime hours, as well as marked stop relocations and closures. The project should be completed by late 2018.
Too bad about the delay. In the long term this looks like a nice improvement, not only from a bus standpoint, but from a pedestrian one as well. It wouldn’t surprise me if this part of Everett really takes off in the coming years. The community college is paired with WSU, and is offering an increasing number of engineering degrees, which are not only popular, but tend to lead to new businesses in the area.
It will be interesting to see transit changes from Lynnwood Link trickle down to the area. The 7 runs every 15 minutes most of the day. This is very good for the area (almost as good as Swift, that runs every 12 minutes). But the 7 is a very strange route (http://everetttransit.org/192/Route-7). It starts out just fine, heading down Broadway. Then it cuts over to the Transit Center, which makes sense. But then it backtracks to Hewitt, cuts over to Rucker, then heads south (doing one last button hook for good measure). It is obviously trying to do too much to be a really effective route.
Meanwhile, the 510 (from Seattle) gets off the freeway, heads up Broadway, makes a stop on 34th and then ends at the Everett TC. It also manages to run about every 15 minutes.
It seems like these two lines should be combined, once Link gets to Lynnwood. Keep the 510, but have it continue north after Everett Station. Go up Broadway, all the way to the college (with the same stops as the 7). The southern end of the 7 can then be truncated at Everett Station.
Better yet, continue the 7 as the northern part of the 29 (http://everetttransit.org/196/Route-29), but without all the back and forth around downtown. The 7 would go up Rucker (as it does now) but cut over earlier, at 33rd to Everett Station. Then it would head back west to Broadway, and north up to Everett Avenue. Then it would follow the northern route of the 29, up to the college. You would still have a one seat ride from Evergreen Way to the college, while straightening out and simplifying the system. The southern part of the 29 could operate as it does now, or be paired with the 6.
Hewett & Rucker is downtown Everett with shopping and jobs, the traditional transfer for buses, and it’s next to the former Interurban on Colby. So it’s partly inertial and partly practical. Pacific Street would be more direct; I don’t know if it would be better. It partly overlaps with Swift, which is on Rucker and Pacific. and partly doesn’t.
Extending the 512’s successor to Everett CC would make sense because Everett and Snohomish consider it the ultimate Link terminus.
Broadway with mixed-use housing will do very well because it’s the least-expensive area on Link, it’s within walking distance of downtown Everett, and it’s close to the industrial center and will have a Link ride there. It won’t be as attractive for commuting to Seattle or Bellevue, because of the hour-long travel time and being beyond the double-frequency area and 405 BRT. But it will be more attractive to people who work in Everett or Lynnwood. It’s the northern counterpart to the Tacoma Dome station area. Tacoma Dome area has large industrial buildings and is barely two blocks wide between highways, but southeast Everett still has housing and retail and an intact street grid, so it’s already halfway there and will be much easier to convert. I wish Everett’s streets and setbacks were narrower, but it’s something where the pre-WWII infrastructure is still alive.
Still no prospects of merging Everett Transit with Community Transit? Having two separate transit agencies makes no sense. Everett citizens get to ride CT buses without paying CT taxes.
King County and Island County residents get to ride CT buses without paying CT taxes too. Everett Transit is paying for the part of Swift in Everett, and contributed to its construction. The 201/202 make only two stops in Everett, one at Everett Station which it would have to serve anyway, and one for the hell of it in this Broadway area since it’s going through it anyway. Does any other CT route go into Everett? CT and ET will be restructured with Everett Link, and perhaps even ET with Lynnwood Link, so those will be opportunities to verify CT isn’t giving Everett too much service. But the 201/202 are mostly for people in Marysville, and beyond that Arlington and Quilceda, and they do deserve CT service to Everett and Lynnwood.
Consolidating the agencies would be a long political process. It’s not at all a high priority.