Stephen Fesler has an intriguing article in The Urbanist saying Metro should move away from RapidRide in its next expansion phase. That sounds like potentially a very good idea. This would not decommission current lines or those that are under construction or in late planning that have already received grants, but it would redirect resources beyond that more regular bus service and incremental improvements instead of additional RapidRide lines.
Metro’s long-range plan is called Metro Connects. It has two concepts: an Interim network for ST2, and a 2050 network for ST3. Current revenue trends can only do a small part of it, so it would need a countywide Metro levy to do the rest. King County was going to put it on the November 2020 ballot, but covid intervened and demanded all their attention, and then they wanted the Harborview expansion alone on the November ballot, and since then they’ve talked about it but haven’t done anything.
Metro Connects has a combination of RapidRide, Frequent, Express, and Local routes. “Frequent” is at least every 15 minutes for 18 hours weekdays, 12 hours weekends. “Express” means stopping every 1-2 miles all day. “Local” is for coverage routes running every 30-60 minutes. (Sometimes two Local routes overlap for combined 15-minute service on part of their runs.) In the original Metro Connects in 2016, Metro proposed filling out the alphabet of RapidRide lines, so going from six lines to around twenty. Seattle had a half dozen of these lines in the Move Seattle levy. Since then, both have scaled back. The current 2050 vision has the five under construction or planning (G, I, J, K, R), and the rest as potential “candidate” projects.
The G Line will open this fall. The I will start construction this year; the J next year. The K and R are awaiting full funding.
Fesler argues that the recent and current RapidRide projects are taking too long, cost too much, and aren’t delivering as much transit-lane priority as promised. A speedy BRT-lite upgrade can take two or three years, one for planning and one or two for construction. The G, H, I, and J are taking 8-14 years. The R is simply an upgrade of the 7, and many of the transit-priority upgrades and next-arrival displays are already finished, and the only new extension is a half mile to reach Rainier Beach Link station — yet the earliest it can open is 2028, four years from now.
“The dirty secret of RapidRide,” Fesler writes, “is that, at its core, it’s cheap, quick, and easy to implement — if we dispense with all the bureaucratic effort to secure federal and state grants and carry out repetitive block-by-block street fights which delay those grants. Those fights often lead to local jurisdictions jettisoning bus lanes and queue jumps, anyway, which are a key feature to deliver the “Rapid” part of the service.”
We could just finish the G and I, and divert the rest of the RapidRide money to regular bus service and spot street upgrades like the 40 is getting. That would provide more frequent routes, in more neighborhoods, more quickly than the RapidRide vision. We desperately need more frequent service throughout Seattle and King County, so that people can get around to jobs and appointments without undue waiting, and to make transit more competitive with driving. That’s more important than a few RapidRide lines that won’t be that much more rapid. Incremental improvements can gradually get us to the same point, without the cost of red buses.
