Metro dishes up the peanut butter

51 Replies to “Metro dishes up the peanut butter”

1. Ugg, Route 903, while operated by Metro, the Tacoma portion is funded by Pierce Transit.

   And when will PT get it through their think heads that straight line routes are always better? A straight line down Northshore to Browns Point would have been the same length of route but better ridership since riders could get everywhere faster.

   1. They are doing nearly that now, just ending at the Center at Norpoint so it’s short enough to do with a single bus. I think the longer routing works better if it goes all the way to Tacoma with one bus and if it runs all day. I think people didn’t understand why they had to take another bus, or didn’t even think they could (because the bus doesn’t go to downtown Tacoma, I can’t take it to downtown Tacoma). I think something closer to all day service is important, since PT’s community feedback included the desire for more trip times, including night service. The longer route would make more sense then, since it connects residents to a community center, a library, and a grocery store. Suffice to say, they aren’t exactly getting quite to night service (except maybe by Piece Transit standards), but the 4/5 peak trips (compared to today’s 3/3) seems significantly less intimidating for a potential rider.

2. With the change involving essentially better frequency without routing changes, Metro is setting up conditions for an interesting case study on how better frequency may or may not increase daily transit ridership. Will Metro monitor and report any before-and-after data about this by any more specifics than average daily route boardings?

   A related topic is how Metro will do any outreach to let potential riders know of the frequency improvements. A simple small temporary sign or banner on a bus stop pole announcing “Now every 15 minutes until 10 pm weekdays” could be a powerful and cheap direct marketing effort. The impact of doing this could probably also be a good topic for a before-and-after study.

3. It’s interesting that routes 164 & 183 are getting half hour headways on Saturdays, while still not running on Sundays. I would think that the priority would be 1. Hourly Sunday service 2. Half-hourly Saturday service 3. Half-hourly Sunday service.

   1. If you have the flexibility to travel either Saturday or Sunday, a more usable Saturday schedule is better than having the same hourly crap on Saturdays also available on Sundays.

      Also, adding Sunday service creates more paratransit obligations, but improving frequency on Saturday does not. Paratransit requirements are based on whether regular bus service exists at all not how frequently it rubs.

   2. The 183 has pretty low ridership and I can see that it might not justify Sunday service.

      The 164 is a different story, and I honestly find the lack of Sunday service on it baffling. I suppose the thinking is that GRCC has nothing happening on Sunday and that most of the rest of the ridership is in the area shared with the 168.

      1. Are there good reasons why the 158 and 159 still exist? How much local service on the 164 and 168 could be added by scavenging those service hours?

   3. Good points. Hourly service is crap, but it’s something a rider can make do with *if* the service span is big enough. Hourly trips make service less convenient, but no Sunday service makes trips impossible. And for the weekend riders (though admittedly few) who have a desire for Sunday service, that would probably be more important to them then being able to leave at 7:45 instead of 7:15.

      Anecdotally, I used to live car-free on hourly bus service in Federal Way, and a huge limitation for me was the fact that the last trip of my bus on Sunday left at 8:45pm (vs nearly midnight in other days), meaning I had to leave Seattle at about 7:30 to make it. I would have taken 3 hours headways on Sunday if it meant that there could be a 10pm trip.

   4. Must be nice to have Saturday/Sunday/evening/non-peak-direction/non-peak-daytime service, unlike the other end of Auburn.

4. Nice to see some adjustment to the 373.

   Now if Sound Transit or Metro could just keep elevators operational at the Yarrow Point stop on 520.

   Not sure why I should vote for these “improvements” when they don’t function

   1. Not sure why I should vote for these “improvements” when they don’t function.

      Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

      Elevators and escalators can always (in theory) be fixed. Additional bus service and priority are always a battle to fund and implement.

   2. Is there room to install more elevators at Yarrow Point Freeway Station?

      1. You might be able to fit in one of the sardine can elevators they use on the north end of ID Station if you demo’d the staircase and rebuilt it half as wide

         Maybe

         Dunno if that’s feasible but there’s not a lot of room to work with there.

5. Any morning frequency additions to the #11 are welcome, but I was hoping that they would fill the gaps in late morning peak, but it looks like they remain 16-18 minutes apart. 7:52, 8:08, 8:24, 8:42 a.m. departures are the worst stretch where the bus actually gets crushloaded and bunched. Most of the rest of the time there’s plenty of room.

   1. I feel the same about the 372. Metro keeps adding 1-2 trips at odd hours, or in the non-peak direction. But during morning rush hour, there’s a trip missing around 9am which leaves a gap of 18 minutes between 372s.

      I also can’t wait for the day when the 372 finally goes past Lake City on weekends. The 522 is a poor local bus along Lake City Way / Bothell Way.

      1. Base capacity, people. Metro doesn’t have the capability to add peak-period trips in most cases right now, because that requires an extra bus, and there’s no room for more buses. Not until south base annex comes online.

      2. Why not spread the existing buses more evenly? 8:30-10:00am, time spacing in minutes on the 372 is 5-3-5-4-4-5-6-17-8-7-7-5-9. 14 buses in 90 minutes = 1 bus every 6/7 minutes. Spread out some of the earlier buses so there isn’t as large of a hole in the middle. And it doesn’t require extra service hours.

      3. Seattle has some ability to increase peak service, by painting 3rd Ave red.

         The county has some ability to increase peak service, by getting all the 3rd Ave ORCA readers installed, and then put some space between the cash fare and the electronic fare. It could also look at whether the presence of some buses like the 122, 157, 158, and 159 are really justified when train connections could save service hours to improve local service and fewer buses downtown could improve bus flow.

         The state has some ability to increase peak bus service, by passing the bus lane camera enforcement bill.

         Faster buses are possible. That’s the better approach for increasing trips.

6. Still waiting for 10 min service on the D & E daily…

   1. The D has the numbers for it, but it would be a huge addition of hours.

      I don’t think the C can justify it outside of peak hours at this point.

   2. Agreed. But the whole RapidRide network ought to get attention, foremost the A Line, which would be so much better if it got Link frequency. Sadly, evening service on the south-end RapidRides has gotten chiseled away at, while span of useful service on the 574 and 578 gets shorter and shorter. Consolidate those hours into the Pierce Transit local route between Tacoma and Federal Way (the 500), and the A Line, so that the options don’t collapse simultaneously mid-evening. Build a late-evening/night owl local-stops bridge to 2030.

7. Only one additional evening trip for the 271 :(
   There’s so much pent-up demand for the segment between downtown bellevue and UW station, but I don’t see how problems would be fixed unless they created a separate route for that segment instead of bundling it with the Issaquah portion. Having the same route serve U district, Bellevue, and Issaquah makes it especially prone to the bus-bunching phenomenon.

   1. There are many trips on the 271 that don’t serve Issaquah, and run U-District to Eastgate P&R.

      1. I didn’t realize they already had some seperate trips for that segment. However, I wonder how much of a reliability impact there is from still serving Eastgate instead of starting at Bellevue transit center. For doing the reverse commute, it’s often faster to do 271 => light rail instead of the 550, but with the insane evening crowding and unpredictable wait times in the evening it’s not worth the hassle for me. At least I get my own seat on the 550.

      2. Those Eastgate -> Bellevue 271s are serving Bellevue Community College. A truncation to Bellevue Transit Center cuts them off. You could put the first stop inside BCC., but you can’t really remove the overall service.

      3. How about splitting the 271 at Bellevue TC, and improving reliability on both resulting shorter routes? Does the Issaquah segment really need artics?

      4. There are no artics on the 271. It operates out of Bellevue Base, which has no artics.

         A few trips used to be out of East Base, but I think those have all been eliminated.

      5. A surprisingly large amount of BCC students live West of the lakes. Splitting at BTC forces the plurality of rides into two seat ride territory. It could be done, but it really shouldn’t. It would actively make transit worse for the Eastside.

         Splitting at Eastgate makes much more sense. Between Eastgate and Issaquah, the route becomes meandering and much more “local”. In Bellevue the 271 is much more of an “express” type service. At the UW, it kind of splits the middle, like many express routes to/from 520.

      6. At a minimum, the weekend version of the 271 needs to be re-thought. During the weekend, every bus goes all the way out to Issaquah – no buses truncate at Eastgate – and they pay for sending every single bus out to Issaquah by running the route with poor frequency – half-hourly at best, dropping to hourly around 6 PM (westbound) and 8 PM (eastbound). The span of service also leaves much to be desired, with the last trip of the night leaving the U-district around 10:30 PM.

         Not only does this provide too much service to Issaquah at the expense of the more popular sections, but it’s also not even all that useful for Issaquah, at least in terms of connecting the major nodes. Issaquah TC->Eastgate is much faster on the 554. Issaquah TC->U-district is much faster on the 554 and Link, even with the overhead of the downtown transfer. Even Issaquah TC->Bellevue TC, the one-seat ride on the 271 is not actually any faster than various two-seat ride options, such as 554->240 (connecting at Eastgate) or 554->550 (connecting at Mercer Island).

         On top of all this, Metro schedules in a 5-minute pause at Bellevue Transit on most weekend trips to change bus drivers, so thru-riders are effectively required to pay the transfer penalty anyway – they just don’t have to get off the bus to do it.

         On weekends, I would absolutely truncate the route at Bellevue Transit Center to fund 15-minute service across the lake.

         Weekdays, I’m less confident. My gut feeling is, for now, to terminate all weekday trips at Eastgate and move the Issaquah tail onto some lesser route, such as the 212 (only selected trips, of course). Longer term, Bellevue College should be connected to Link at South Bellevue P&R via a quick, I-90 based shuttle, which sounds much faster than slogging through Bellevue for 15 miles on a local bus.

      7. Colleges draw from quite a large area. In the past ten years my roomate on Capitol Hill has attended Seattle Central, Bellevue College, and Shoreline. He says he prefers Shoreline now for the educational quality and atmosphere.

         The 271’s one-seat ride may be convenient from North Seattle, but from the rest of Seattle it makes no difference. From southwest Capitol Hill the choices are Link+271, 550+271, or 554. East Link will make the I-90 alternative even better.

         I once went from the Issaquah Highlands to Bellevue midday. My first thought was 554+271, but that would have been a 20-minute transfer at Issaquah TC (a ghastly concrete jungle) and a 25-minute meander, so instead I took the 554 to Mercer Island and the 550 to Bellevue, which had less waiting and was more pleasant. So a meander from Issaquah to the U-District doesn’t sound very appealing, and that may be partly why the 271’s ridership west of Bellevue College is so low.

8. Nice to see the added outbound stop on the 554. Eastside riders have been screaming about lack of eastbound service in Chinatown since the 550 left the tunnel in March (and the 554’s outbound routing was changed to Dearborn via 4th prior to that). Sound Transit’s suggestion of backtracking to 2nd/Yesler was never really workable.

9. I’m loving how Metro is open to ways to improve span of frequent service that don’t involve adding service hours. That’s smart and colors outside the Service Guidelines. And I’m glad they are following the Service Guidelines to figure out where to distribute extra service.

   Maybe we should throw re-examination of loop-de-loop deviations into the Guidelines so that things like the Georgetown loop-de-loop on route 107 (ruining the route for kids trying to get to various schools while providing an improved pathway between Georgetown and Renton for … Not Me, Ida Know, and Nobody?) don’t become permanent via inertia. At the very least, ditch the Georgetown loop-de-loop during peak pre-first-bell and post-final-bell hours, since route 60 provides excellent frequency between Georgetown and Beacon Hill Station during those times. When posting signage seeking comments about such a routing change proposal, please post all along the route, not just the stops being considered for removal. Every rider who rides by that stop would be impacted, the vast majority of them positively. But thanks much for fixing the schedules on this Beacon Hill Station de facto trunk line with two neighborhood tails!

   Thank you also to the City of Des Moines for their investment! I intend to ride the shuttle and stop by an old Thai restaurant in the Marina District I rarely get to as soon as a I get a Saturday off. Well, maybe the next Saturday after I enjoy my 25-cent transfer to the monorail, and see how the vegan food options have improved in Lower Queen Anne.

10. David,
    what is the fiscal role of the Seattle TBD in most of the service adds?

    1. It appears that STBD is paying for most, but not all, of the improvements in Seattle. But that is based on comparisons of numbers that may not track exactly, so I’m not completely sure.

       1. The last system evaluation reports 72K funded by Metro, 100k funded by Seattle, 20K by Amazon/Other, and 10K funded by Sound Transit.
          I didn’t see a breakout of Seattle vs elsewhere or March vs September. (page 219 of https://aqua.kingcounty.gov/Council/agendas/RTC/20190116-RTC-packet.pdf)

11. Still missing east-west service along Mercer to serve the north Seattle Center area and connect with the C-line, 40, 62, to name a few…
    I also miss the old 30 that made it super- easy to get from the UW area to the center instead of route that meanderd far far west via Interbay,

    1. I agree that there should be an east-west connection in SLU, but pushing it through the Mercer Mess would be like throwing service hours into a ditch. Once the Harrison crossing of the old Highway 99 is complete, there should definitely be service along that corridor.

       Service from the UW area to Seattle Center will be provided by a transfer from Link to the Monorail at Westlake, which will be accepting ORCA shortly. This will improve further when Northgate Link opens and there’s a proper UDistrict station.

    2. As someone who now lives on the southwest side of QA and works in SLU, I totally get the desire for a bus on Mercer, but that street is just a traffic disaster area. I can often walk faster than the cars on Mercer. That’s why Metro changed the 30 (and the former 16).

       Once the SR 99 roadwork is done, maybe there could be a revived 30 via Roy St, 5th Ave N, Harrison St and Dexter or Westlake. It would be a little circuitous but probably reliable enough, and maybe the circuitousness is worth it to serve the Center and the dense south slope of Queen Anne.

       1. Given so many complaints about Mercer, did SDOT mess it up by creating one wide two-way street, rather than extend the Mercer-Roy one-way couplet east from Fifth to the I-5 ramps?

          I realize it’s an academic question but given the huge mess and huge crosswalk distances, I have to wonder.

       2. Bruce, that’s what the *8* should do… Roy, 5th, Harrison, Fairview, Denny, Olive, John, etc….

    3. The 30 was replaced with the 32 because the 32 route was faster at peak hours, despite its geographic indirectness.

       1. Bruce is correct. the Harrison Street over crossing now provides a more direct pathway opportunity. The Mercer West project disrupted the earlier pathways.

          Note that it is chunky and not smooth peanut butter.

       2. I have personally found the 70 (plus ~15 minutes walking) to be the quickest option between the U-district and Seattle Center. If you walk fast, it can be significantly quicker than the 32 (depending on which end of Seattle Center you’re going to). Plus, you get the 70’s frequency of service.

          Once the Monorail starts accepting Orca cards, Link+monorail is likely to be even faster. But, I’m hesitant to try it today because the Monorail’s boarding process is so inefficient. Today, the process of waiting in line to purchase the tickets takes far more time than actually riding it.

12. The additional 17X trip in the PM peak appears to be at the very beginning of the peak (departing 4/Jackson at 3:20pm).

    This increases the span of express service, but doesn’t really help overcrowding – the first 18X of the day is rarely full.

    The biggest cause of PM peak overcrowding on the 17/18 is the lack of schedule adherence – buses can easily be 5+ minutes late at the 3rd stop of the route.

13. Something too long left unmentioned in training, about coach headways: Individual drivers have considerable control over spacing and should use it.

    With some drivers, it’s deliberate work-avoidance to ride the back bumper of the overloaded coach ahead of you. Part of probably transit operations’ worst misconception: “Everybody should just drive their own bus.”

    Regarding matters like both following distance and holding for connections, shouldn’t be allowed to survive first day of training. Attitude should be, “If I can see it, or even just know it’s there….I’m adjustably coupled to it.”

    Works for agencies and all their departments, and should be major underpinning for fare policy too.

    Mark Dublin

14. Considering the 22 is moved to Delridge, I wonder why it isn’t also moved from 41st Ave SW to California. I know this was discussed many years ago, but at that time the 22 ran to Downtown, while now it is just a shuttle.

    1. The 22 runs on 41st Ave SW because streetcars once ran there. I don’t why that is important, but Metro has considered it important for 70 years now.

       My big question is whether Metro will add any stops on the new Delridge segment of the 22. Same-stop transfers from the 120 are an opportunity for major ridership increase.

       1. Yes, both routes will share stops at Delridge/Trenton.

          But there are already same-stop transfers between these two routes farther south, on 26 Av SW.

15. Actually route 101 will have the last outbound trip to Renton leaving Seattle around 12:50am or so daily. (so service to midnight per your description, is slightly wrong)

    1. Such descriptions are invariably imprecise/approximate, and take into account both directions.

    2. Yes, it’s hard to tell what time to cite. Each direction is different, and the bus’s origin may be irrelevant to passengers coming from the middle of a long run.

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