Trailhead Direct Expands For Its Second Season

47 Replies to “Trailhead Direct Expands For Its Second Season”

1. “The Mailbox Peak shuttle was previously a very short hop between downtown North Bend and the trailhead”

   Not quite correct. Last year, the Mailbox Peak shuttle went to a school parking lot in the middle of nowhere, which had no connecting transit service, so you still needed a car to get to the shuttle. Downtown North Bend would have connected with the Mt. Si route and enabled car-free access to Mailbox Peak.

   This year, things are different. The Mailbox shuttle now connects to the Mt. Si route in North Bend and both of the other routes at Issaquah Transit Center. This is great news!

   1. Thanks for the correction. Ironically this means that there will be weekend and holiday service to North Bend that is as frequent as its weekday offerings.

2. “With the shuttles all converging at Issaquah Transit Center…”

   Not quite. The Si shuttle doesn’t appear to serve Issaquah. It looks like there’s a timed transfer to the Alps shuttle at Eastgate though.

   1. The Mt. Si shuttle connects to the Mailbox shuttle in North Bend, and the Issaquah Alps shuttle in Eastgate, so it doesn’t need to serve Issaquah directly. Doing so would just slow things down.

3. It’d be nice if North Bend had something crazy, like Sunday service, before pandering to Seattleites who care more about getting to a trailhead than expanding the transit footprint. The burbs don’t deserve transit unless the gilded elites can use it as a luxury, I guess.

   The galling part is North Bend once had Sunday service, back in the 90s.

   1. Maybe it depends who’s asking for the service?

      I agree that KCM should have North Bend service every day, but it may be that their (influential) elites don’t see a benefit to weekend service as much as Seattle’s do.

   2. I hope to one day achieve galaxy brain levels of wokeness to think that the “gilded elites” are the ones taking a Metro shuttle bus to the trailhead instead of just driving like real proles do.

      1. Driving is gauche and passe. The trailing crowd would sooner ebike from Issaquah than take a SOV. Could you imagine if someone outed you as a driver over Cabernet?

         I don’t kid, either. I attend their parties as a work function. I’m actually underselling the elitism and tongue wagging.

      2. Sounds like you need a new job with fewer gilded elites on the payroll. Have you notified your boss?

   3. Trailhead Direct’s funding is mostly pooled from the Seattle TBD and some private sponsors (REI, Cliff Bar, etc.), so it’s not like it’s being taken out of Metro’s regular service. Given that the alternative would be to build larger and larger parking lots to accommodate the growing demand for outdoor recreation, it would be hard to argue that this isn’t a win for the suburbs too. Heck, some people might actually use these suburbs to go visit North Bend proper during the weekends (I know that I plan on doing so).

   4. I thought North Bend is outside the KCM district? Snoqualmie Valley Transportation contracts with KCM but is a distinct entity, I think?

      1. The 208 is Metro, the 628 contracted out to Hopelink. SVT only runs a NB to Redmond shuttle through Fall City.

      2. KCM’s district is all of King County as was its predecessor Metro.

      3. OK, good to know.

         So then what is Snoqualmie Valley Transportation?

      4. Metro is evolving to “alternative service delivery” in the least-populated areas, to offer transit service at lower cost and with more coverage than it can otherwise do. It has been experimenting with a variety of methods, including subsidizing non-Metro-operated vans and on-demand taxis. SVT is the primary example of the former, and Metro 2 (app-hailed taxis in south-central Bellevue) is the latter. (There’s also Metro 2 in West Seattle, but I think that was a special-purpose viaduct mitigation rather than a target coverage area.)

         Snoqualmie Valley Transporation was founded by the Snoqualmie Tribe, Metro, and a senior center in North Bend. Metro invested seed money and provides the vans. SVT runs the Valley Shuttle from North Bend to Duvall, weekdays approx. every 90 minutes. The fare is $1 donation, or free transferring to/from Metro. The schedule is uncoordinated with the 208, with wait times of 10-40 minutes in Snoqualmie. I had only a 10-minute wait northbound in Duvall, but i don’t know if it’s coordinated there. SVT also runs the Downtown Loop (NB-Snoqualmie), Cedar Falls Loop, Duvall-Monroe Shuttle, and Ridge Loop.

         I wrote about the Valley Shuttle in my Snoqualmie Valley bus trip.

      5. Another problem with the Snoqualmie Valley Transportation shuttle – not only does it not run on weekends, but every minor holiday – including President’s Day and even Veterans Day, it doesn’t run. As someone who works a normal 9-5 job, this means that to ride the bus to, say, Carnation, I am being asked to pay for the ride, not with money, but with vacation time. But, for my job (and many others), vacation days are a very limited, precious commodity, that I prefer to spend either with family, or doing actual travel (e.g. riding the transit systems of Europe or Asia).

         That is why Trailhead Direct being a weekend service, as opposed to a weekday service is such a huge deal. It means it’s running when people have the time to actually ride it.

   5. Spending time in the nature we evolved in is important for health. The bulk of the population lives in and around Seattle and has the least access to nature without shuttles like this. It’s not coming out of Metro’s East King funds. The 208 should have Sunday service (and more frequent service and better transfers to the 554 and SVT), but that has little to do with the trailhead shuttles. Switzerland has transit to all parts of the country including recreational areas and ski resorts, and people don’t say they shouldn’t have it because only city-dwelling elites use it.

      In the 80s there was a Seattle-North Bend milk run every 90-120 minutes and a peak express. At some point the 208 replaced the milk run, maybe when the 554 was created for Seattle-Issaquah service. The milk run went from Issaquah to Preston, Fall City, Snoqualmie and North Bend. The 208 inherited that routing; Later Snoqualmie Ridge and Snoqualmie Parkway were built and had peak-only transit. In the 2014 budget cuts, the peak expresses were deleted, the 208 was rerouted to Snoqualmie Ridge, and the SVT Valley Shuttle took over the Fall City-Snoqualmie routing and runs from North Bend to Duvall. Metro invested seed money in SVT and supplies the van but a senior center operates it and the Snoqualmie Tribe funds it. There’s also another SVT route, a North Bend-Snoqualmie circulator. The loss of 208 Sunday service might have happened in the 2014 cuts.

      King County voted down the last 2-3 Metro supplemental measures, including one that would have canceled the 2014 cuts. There were four rounds of cuts scheduled over two years. The first round went through and chopped the least-used service; Snoqualmie was part of that. Then the council canceled the rest of the cuts because the economy was starting to recover. Seattle passed Prop 1, which was originally written to compensate for the cuts, but by the time the vote came it wasn’t needed for that so it went into additional frequency and span. The other cities have had the option of doing that but only a few have done so with a few routes. Metro’s 2025 plan recommends replacing the 208 with a half-hourly Express route from North Bend to Snoqualmie, Issaquah, and Mercer Island (transferring to Link for Seattle), and a half-hourly Local route to replace the Valley Shuttle. Those are unfunded at this point but there will probably be another countywide Metro measure in the next year.

      The Sound Transit district ends at Issaquah, where the 554 ends.

      1. Is being in nature integral to the human condition? I think so, but that doesn’t support your argument. Seattle is trashing the Snoqualmie Valley. Rattlesnake Ledge is often so crowded you will never see the nature through the hundreds of people surrounding you. Littering. Destrying trees by unwrapping bark. If you want nature, live next to nature. But piss in your own backyard, Seattle. King County should not be Seattle’s playground. Seattle should be Seattle’s playground. Show some basic respect when you’re in somebody else’s neighborhood.

         The Seattle-NB run suffered the same fate as NB Sunday service. I-695. That’s how long Seattle (who pushed Olympia into raiding the Transportation Fund) has been maligning the Snoqualmie Valley.

         The 208 never ran to Preston or Fall City. It was always the Sno Ridge luxury line. Snoqualmie Ridge ripped off the Valley by breaking their contractual obligation to not funnel taxes, goods, and services to themselves. The 209 was ended around 2014. The 554 had nothing to do with it.

         2014 tax cuts are a red herring. The trail of transit marginalization goes back to the 90s. You can’t see the forest for the trees.

         After literally two decades of absolute transit destruction in King County outside of Seattle, only a fool would think they’d vote for a transit measure. From Seatac transit deserts to broken promises in the Sno Valley, ST and Metro both have a lot of damage control to do and alot of olive branches to offer people. County wide.

         ST does indeed end at the Issaquah Highlands/Sammamish Plateau (I confess, I do not know where the precise easternmost stop is). Nobody mentioned ST. SVT, Snoqualmie Valley Transit, was mentioned.

      2. “Nobody mentioned ST.”

         I assumed it was the reason for AJ’s confusion about Metro’s boundary. Multiple people have been confused over Metro’s and ST’s boundaries. The Metro district covers all of King County, although Skykomish no longer has service. ST’s eastern boundary is Redmond-Issaquah-Renon-Kent-Auburn, and does not include Snoqualmie, Covington, or Maple Valley.

      3. Seattle is trashing the Snoqualmie Valley. Rattlesnake Ledge is often so crowded you will never see the nature through the hundreds of people surrounding you. Littering. Destrying [sic] trees by unwrapping bark. If you want nature, live next to nature. But piss in your own backyard, Seattle.

         Oh please. Are you saying that the only reason the Issaquah Alps are crowded is because of people from Seattle? Do you check I. D.? What gives them away — their urban savoir faire? Give me a break. There are plenty of folks from the suburbs who go there. If anything, it is far more likely that someone nearby goes there than someone from Seattle. Since I live in Seattle, if I want a short hike, I’ll go to Discovery Park (which, by the way, is not thrashed, despite all them city folk gallivanting around). If I lived in the Central Area, or Rainier Valley, I would go to Seward Park. If I lived in West Seattle, I would go to Lincoln Park. But if I lived in Issaquah, or Lake Sammamish, or Snoqualmie Ridge, North Bend, or any of the dozen or so sprawling areas that have grown enormously in the last 20 years, then I would go to the Issaquah Alps. Of course I would. It isn’t that far of a drive.

         But as someone from Seattle, why bother? Seriously, Little Si is nice, Rattlesnake is good too (although way too crowded), but Mailbox is a joke. So is Si. Both of those peaks are way too much work for the view. My guess is the vast majority of people who keep going back to those areas live nearby (just like I keep going back to Discovery Park).

         If I have already spent a good fifteen to thirty minutes driving, why exit so early, when you are nowhere near the good stuff. Just drive for another fifteen minutes, and you have, literally, Wilderness. I get why someone would drive to a mediocre hike if it was nearby. But why drive for a half hour when it is only fifteen more minutes until you have something outstanding?

         Oh wait, I guess that is bad. Only those that live in the Alpine Lakes are supposed to hike there. Got it. I’ll keep that in mind.

      4. I may have conflated multiple restructures or got some dates wrong. I used to live on the 210 in Somerset, the predecessor to the 208, and I’ve followed the restructures since then but not very closely, and I remember the period when Snoqualmie Ridge had no all-day transit even though it was higher-population than the Fall City routing. You may be right that the 554 came first, then the 208 was created and routed through Snoqualmie Ridge and the Valley Shuttle was created for the Fall City gap, then in 2014 the 208 lost weekend service, then some time later it regained Saturday service. Is that accurate?

   6. It’d be nice if North Bend had something crazy, like Sunday service, before pandering to Seattleites who care more about getting to a trailhead than expanding the transit footprint. The burbs don’t deserve transit unless the gilded elites can use it as a luxury, I guess.

      The galling part is North Bend once had Sunday service, back in the 90s.

      The reason that North Bend doesn’t have great transit service is because it is so expensive. Basically, other areas got tired of subsidizing North Bend. This includes Seattle, of course, but mostly other suburban areas. In general, suburban runs are far more expensive to operate than urban ones. They perform very poorly because — surprise, surprise — people in the suburbs would rather drive. Suburban transit ridership is so poor that Metro creates a different category to measure it. You have urban, suburban and DART, just like you have majors, minors and double A.

      If you look at the numbers, it is quite clear. Suburban runs — for the most part — perform poorly. In the all important riders per hour of service (which is a proxy for the cost-effectiveness of a run) they are bad. The 628 carries 0.3 people per platform hour. The absolute worse “urban” line is the 192 (who knew “Star Lake was urban”). It carries 9.5 people per platform hour, or over thirty times as many people per dollar spent than the 628. Even most suburban buses perform way better than North Bend service. The 201 really drags down the group, with only 2.1 riders per platform hour. Yet that is still seven times the cost efficiency of North Bend service. Seven Times!

      Then you have the issue of funding. Basically, Seattle wants more transit, the suburbs don’t. Seattle is willing to subsidize some of the suburban funding, but only so much. The suburbs, for the most part, don’t want to pay for any of it (because — surprise, surprise — people in the suburbs would rather drive). As a result, Seattle will pay for extra transit, but the suburbs, for the most part, won’t.

      1. North Bend doesn’t have good transit because of Seattle actively attempting to suck a larger and larger chunk of the transit pie and I-695.

         Mt. Si is no long hike. One can ascend Little Si and Big Si in the same day. Big Si is also incredibly popular. Almost as bad as Rattlesnake.

         I find it very… informative that this multi-decade issue is being framed in terms of transit’s past 5 years. It shows where one’s priorities truly are.

      2. I-695 is not Seattle’s fault. It was spearheaded by an activist in Mukilteo, and the most yes votes came from the exurbs and the rest of the state.

         Seattle is not sucking a larger chunk of the transit pie. Metro has subareas and it keeps the hours within the subarea when it restructures. Seattle is buying extra bus service with its own money. That doesn’t change Metro’s base calculations; it’s overlaid on top of it.

         Or are you talking about Constantine’s concern that a renewal of the Seattle levy might diminish Seattle’s appetite for a countywide measure, and the latter needs Seattle’s votes in order to pass? The city is cooperating with the county and won’t offer its own measure before it. That’s risky for Seattle transit because Prop 1 expires in 2021 and if a countywide vote fails in November 2020 there may not be time to get a city measure in place before the funding runs out. Then the 5, 8, 10, and 40 would revert to 30-minute evenings and the 11 to 30-minute Saturdays, among others.

      3. @A Jay — You don’t seem to get it. Bus service to North Bend is a massive subsidy to North Bend. It is people in the county going out of their way to *not* serve places like Seattle, and instead serve North Bend. If they simply went by the numbers — if they simply chose the most cost effective transit — then North Bend would get nothing. That is because literally every single bus route in Seattle is orders of magnitude more cost effective.

         But it isn’t even Seattle that is running more cost effective bus routes. It is your fellow suburbs. Those places have found the same thing. If you have a complaint, then it is with those suburbs for under-funding transit in the region or not subsidizing you to your heart’s content.

         Why should Seattle pay for such inefficient transit? What else do you want from Seattle — do you want us to add sidewalks in your city as well? You seem to imply that money is flowing from places like North Bend to Seattle, when it is the other way around. But apparently it isn’t flowing as freely as it once did, nor is it flowing as much as you would like. The way to solve that is to raise taxes, and guess who supports higher taxes? That’s right — the cities! Guess who opposes them? The suburbs.

         As for Little Si, Big Si, and all the other hikes in area, I am well aware of them. My point is that almost all of them are overrated. The reason they are hiked so much is because for many, it is right out there back yard. As with the funding, if you have a complaint, take it up with your neighbors.

   7. Given that Trailhead Direct is already running, it’s worth asking what the marginal cost actually is to use the same buses to provide Sunday service to North Bend. Intuition tells me the answer is probably very little. The buses are already going out to North Bend anyway, so it’s just a matter of rebranding some deadhead runs as service runs and updating the posted schedule. These runs don’t even need to spend time driving through Snoqualmie Ridge (which does consume actual service hours), just offer rides to people in North Bend when they happen to be passing through. If anyone rides them, great. If not, well, the buses are running anyway, so offering the option didn’t cost anything.

      1. I was thinking that too. It would give North Bend much better service than Metro has ever managed to do. It used to serve a North Bend P&R when that was the terminus, so i thought it might have a stop there now but according to the sign at UW Station it doesn’t. They should add it.

      2. Another thought experiment I’ve imagined is having empty Trailhead Direct buses on their way back after dropping off passengers in the morning change their headsign to say “554” and serve all the regular route 554 stops heading back the other way.

         I suppose it would be weird to have the Trailhead Direct shuttles alternating with 60-foot articulated buses on the same route. But, at 10-minute frequency, no single trip would fill up beyond the capacity of a Trailhead Direct shuttle anyway, so I think it would be doable.

   8. The good old days of the 210…

4. Is anyone else bummed/slightly perplexed by the short span of service in the evening? For instance, the last Mailbox Peak shuttle leaves the trailhead at 6:30 p.m., and this is a fairly long and strenuous hike and one may want to spend some time at the top. I think I wouldn’t use the service because of the stress/uncertainty of not knowing when to turn back – what happens if you don’t make the last bus? Another way in which bus riders are relegated to second-class status – although I appreciate the existence of the service.

   1. First off, if you get an early start, you should have plenty of time. The first bus out of Seattle will get you to the trailhead at 8:47. At a moderate pace, it’s about 3 hours up, 2 hours down, so with 1 additional hour at the top, that puts you back at the trailhead before 3, a full 3 1/2 hours before the last bus leaves.

      But, if you do want to sleep in, and need to know when to turn around, there’s a very easy way to do it. Remember what time you left the bus stop, and conservatively assume that however long it took you to hike up, that’s how long will take to hike down. So, if you’ve been hiking up for 90 minutes and it’s 90 minutes before the last bus, that means it’s time to turn back. In practice, going down is usually faster than going up, so assuming the same amount of time to go down gives you a safety margin.

      That said, if you do miss the last bus, there’s enough people that hike Mailbox, chances are it won’t be too difficult to find someone at the trailhead willing to offer you a ride. Even if they’re not going all the way to Seattle, the odds are, they’re at least passing by Issaquah, which is enough to get you to where you can catch a regular bus.

5. Why are the first return trips so late? What if I want to do a shorter hike — why is 11:40 the earliest I can leave Mt. Si? Presumably those shuttles are deadheading somewhere so it should be possible to get back into civilization at least :)

   1. It looks to me as though those trips just return without stopping, so you could take an earlier one back so long as you ride to the end of the line first.

6. The Tukwila route is interesting as a bus route. As far as I know, this is the first ever direct (ish) Renton to Issaquah route, taking advantage of the (somewhat surprising to transit riders) close proximity between Issaquah and Renton. To make this trip today, you have to take either the slow 240 to Eastgate and get on the 554, or take the 560/566 and get on the 271 (or the 556 if it’s running).

   I’ve always thought a direct route along SR 900 to Issaquah all day would be interesting. If you route it along NE 4th street to around Lake Kathleen, then either taking SR 900 or Issaquah-Hobart road to Issaquah would make lots of new connections, and provide all-day service for many 111 riders. The route could even have trailhead stops on its regular route.

   1. Yeah, my first thought was that, if only the Cougar Mountain route could serve the Red Town Trailhead instead of the Sky Country Trailhead, the bus would be traveling from Renton to Issaquah in something very close to a straight line. Which could get some users as a general transit route, independent of hiking. If the route attracts enough non-hiking users, maybe it could even start running weekdays, as a regular Metro route.

7. They should run these shuttles up to the top (Snoqualmie Pass), and have stops at every exit. If they’re going to NB, it’s only a few more miles to open up endless car-free recreating possibilities. I wish they ran ski buses in the winter, too. They could even charge a relative premium.

   1. I’ve always though that a Snoqualmie ski shuttle would be right up the alley for WSDOT’s Travel Washington program, which subcontracts out to private carriers but keeps relatively fixed fares. Something like $10 to the pass would be quite reasonable.

      1. Absolutely. I was amazed to learn this winter that parking is free at the pass. What are we doing building giant free parking lots on the tops of mountains???

      2. My dad, were he still alive, would recount the glories of the Milwaukee Road Ski Train up to the summit (he was an avid skier). There’s part of me that wishes we still had something like this, not only for winter sports but for access to the backcountry all year without requiring a car. The Milwaukee, despite being the last line built over the Cascades, also had the easiest grades and would have been the natural path for any Seattle – Spokane express train that would have any hope of competing with driving (the current state plans call for using Stampede and then dropping down through Yakima and the Tri-Cities – more people are served but nobody from Seattle or the Eastside would ever go to Spokane that way; that should be a secondary local train). Alas, those days are beyond the point of redemption.

   2. IIRC correctly the top of the Pass is mile marker 51. North Bend ends at Exit 34. The distance is much greater than it seems for little payoff.

      1. Given that you’re driving on a highway with few stops in between, I think this is doable. This would be truly amazing, as it would give access to multiple trailheads by stopping at just a few exits. Many trailheads start right off the exit. It would also enable some backpacking trips. Trying to do a backpacking trip anywhere in the region is really hard without a car.

      2. You could do it. There are plenty of hiking destinations that aren’t that far and extremely popular. These include:

         Mason Lake/Ira Spring Trail — Requires going down a gravel road a couple miles.
         Talapus Lake — Same freeway exit, different gravel road.
         Granite Mountain — Paved and relatively close to the freeway.
         Denny Creek — Paved and a couple miles from the freeway.
         Snoqualmie Pass PCT (Kendall Katwalk) — Paved and close to the freeway
         Snow Lake — Paved and a couple miles from the freeway.

         I could see it working, even if you just did the paved hikes. From the west, you would start with exit 47 and Granite Mountain. Without going on the freeway, you would then serve Denny Creek. Keep going on this back to Snoqualmie Pass (the road is paved and used when the freeway is shutdown). From there, you would drop people off for the PCT, and then park in the huge parking lot for Snow Lake a couple miles further.

         It could work, but it would be expensive. You might also get a lot of complaints, as well as a legal challenge. All of these trails lead to Wilderness areas. There are mandates for keeping crowds down, and extra bus service could work against that. I think it would be easy to argue that people are headed there anyway, but opposition might not look agree. I can tell you right now that if they did that, there would be a lot of complaining on NWHikers, for example.

         I think the tricky part is stashing your after-hike gear (clean socks, street shoes, beer). Typically this is kept in the car, so you would have to find a spot for it, since you wouldn’t be coming back on the same bus. I suppose folks who take these buses have figured it out.

      3. I think the real problem is that the longer the route the more buses you need to run it at any given frequency, and adding those extra miles to extend it out to Snoqualmie Pass would break the budget.

         Ira Springs Trailhead, I don’t think is practical, due to the long gravel road, but I could see Granite Mountain if money were infinite.

         “I think the tricky part is stashing your after-hike gear” That’s the least of the problems. The simple solution is you just carry whatever after-hike gear you need in your pack, up and down the mountain. It really doesn’t add *that* much weight.

   3. There actually are seasonal ski shuttles that run between Seattle and Stevens Pass. The cost is not horrible if you bundle it with a lift ticket, but if you don’t (e.g. you’re just snowshoeing the PCT), the bus fare becomes so expensive that even for a person who doesn’t own a car, it’s not worth it – for just $5-10 more than the bus fare, you could rent a car and drive it up yourself.

8. Last year the 27.5 and 29″ MTBs wouldn’t fit on the racks, my 26″ barley did. There’s all kinds of rides you can do from NB. I’ll be using this starting next weekend.

   1. Last year, I took my bike on the trailhead direct bus to North Bend and rode it all the way up through the Snoqualmie tunnel to Hyak, then had a fun coasting down the hill for the ride back. The Mailbox shuttle adds more bike rack capacity to North Bend, which should make these kinds of trips more reliable.

9. I just want to make one quick correction about route 628. That’s a community connections route. Which means it’s at least partially funded, by the cities that operates in. ( Which would be North bend ,Snoqualmie and Issaquah. ) . If you do want more service in your community, I would suggest contacting your city government.

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