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.
Fesler makes a good case about RapidRide. I see several issues that need to be addressed:
1. RapidRide is being used to justify general street and sidewalk reconstruction with transit dollars.
2. There aren’t many routes left with ridership high enough per mile that could benefit from a RapidRide conversion with better travel times. Off-board payment speeds up the bus, but if it’s only 2 or 3 boarding per mile, it’s not saving a lot of time.
3. I haven’t seen Metro roll out criteria that need to be met to upgrade to RapidRide.
4. I can be quite expensive yet not improve aggregate transit rider travel times once completed by much if the riders are only going as far as the nearby Link station.
5. Too much focus on branding leaves the impression that other routes do not matter and don’t need any capital investment .
With ST2 approaching completion by 2026, it seems to me that Metro should shift to improving transfers at Link stations with its scarce capital dollars. That’s generally where the high-use boarding stops are going to be no matter what the bus line is named.
Such a shift needs a catchy new program name. Streethub? Fastboard? Brightstop?
A lot of this “saved money” will be “lost money”, because RapidRide is the beneficiary of Federal programs for BRT and other “near rapid transit”. Of course, the Republicans might get a trifecta this fall and wipe away all the transit funds, so it certainly shouldn’t be depended upon. But it is a real thing.
“We should use a slow moving & bureaucratic process because it gets us Other People’s Money” pretty much sums up the center left’s current position on public works.
The point is that it’s necessary to have a good level of transit service, where good means the average of industrialized countries. Hand-wringing over whether it’s other people’s money or not misses the point. It’s not a luxury yacht or snowboard; it’s part of the basic infrastructure of a city. It’s something that should have been built when the neighborhoods were first built, and incrementally upgraded over the past seventy years; then we’d already have the things we want to build — again, like our peer countries do.
Honoring grants applies to the grants already received. There’s no reason to decommission the A, C, E, F, G, and H, or the I and J if they’ve already gotten grants. The K and R haven’t gotten grants yet, so nothing would be lost except some planning work. And some of that can be repurposed for non-RapidRide upgrades, since they’ll still need street projects in the same locations, and the stop locations are still valid.
I left out the B because if we go ahead with this and then split the B (into a Crossroads-UDistrict route and a Redmond-Eastgate route), then it would have to lose its RapidRide status. Its grants are so old — dating back to the 2000s — that I doubt we’d have to repay them. We’ve operated it a good number of years. And two major extensions is arguably a good repurposing of the line that would help many riders.
But that should really only apply if the project is worth doing. Otherwise you are simply chasing federal money (which doesn’t pay for the whole thing) while shortchanging the system.
For example, let’s say it costs 20 million dollars to fix all of the approaches to the Fremont Bridge. This means that once the bridge goes up, a bus — any bus — will go right to the front. That is seven different bus routes — a huge improvement.
Now assume for a second that they just focus on converting the 40 to RapidRide. The work in terms of BAT lanes is done. So they add off board payment, a lot of fancy bus stops and make a commitment to a certain level of service. The work costs $30 million, and the feds chip in for 10.
So both projects cost SDOT the same. Which is better? It isn’t even close. The first one is much better. If you are trying to do something major (like center running buses on Madison) then it does make sense to get additional funding from the feds. But there are a ton of projects that we could do fairly quickly if we focus on the right things. Corridors over routes. The network over corridors.
The RapidRide corridors were chosen because they’re the biggest or most strategic corridors in the subareas. We needed to connect northwest Seattle and north-central Seattle (Ballard and Aurora) to downtown. Now we need to address the largest east-west corridor in North Seattle, the 44. Kent needs a fast connection to Link (the KDM-Kent-132nd-GRCC line). 320th in Federal Way and Auburn needs a good east-west Link feeder. The Seattle RapidRide candidates are mostly the same corridors that have been in Seattle’s transit master plan since 2014, and in the monorail long-term plan in the early 2000s. The needs don’t change very much, and everybody knows where they are, we just need to implement good service on them.
A potential route 40 renovation could fix the Fremont Bridge problem you’re talking about, and then all the routes would benefit from it. That’s an open BRT kind of concept. It could be done with the approach in this article, and it doesn’t require RapidRide.
Jesus, I didn’t say “Build RapidRide to get Federal funds.” I said that if planned RapidRides aren’t built Metro won’t get the Federal Funds they might have gotten, so don’t imagine that the “savings” from not RapidRiding some lines will be there for extra service in POTS lines. Most of the capital costs are from grants, and that goes away.
“POBS” not “POTS”
The issue does is what Metro does with its anticipated future revenue, and with a countywide levy on top of that. Metro is gradually digging out of the driver shortage and covid recession, so it’s starting to get more money to increase service hours again. The Lynnwood and G restructures this fall are now getting more hours than thought six months ago. This will continue in future years unless there’s another recession or similar setback. It has enough to proceed with the I and J, and thinks it will be able to do the K and R without the levy but with grants. So that’s what Metro’s resources without the levy are. With the levy it could significantly increase bus service. Maybe not as much as the full Metro Connects vision, but any significant increase is better than none.
I didn’t say “Build RapidRide to get Federal funds.” I said that if planned RapidRides aren’t built Metro won’t get the Federal Funds they might have gotten
And I’m saying so what? It is like the streetcar. If it gets cancelled we lose the federal grant. So what? If we really want service on First we just move a handful of buses and call it a day. We spend way less money on both capital and service.
Wasting money on a project just so that the feds will chip in a little bit is a bad approach. If the project is big enough to warrant federal grants, then by all means do the necessary paperwork to get it. But quite often a very worthy project is not. For example, adding BAT lanes on Denny, so that the 8 runs faster. This is not fundamentally expensive. It would likely require outreach and the sort of thing that happened with the 40, but that is about it. The total cost is fairly cheap. You end up with a street that is faster no matter where we eventually decide to send the 8.
The RapidRide alternative would be to decide on a route, then provide the same amount of right-of-way along with fancy bus stops and fancy buses. We would have far less flexibility in the future. The feds would help pay for some of the fancy bus stops, but even with the feds chipping in their share it would be much better (and a lot faster) to just add paint for Denny.
A potential route 40 renovation could fix the Fremont Bridge problem you’re talking about, and then all the routes would benefit from it.
They would, but only a little bit. For example it wouldn’t fix backups that occur along Nickerson (31/32) nor Dexter (the 62). It might help buses that come from 35th (31, 32, 62) but at best this would be the last little section (on Fremont Avenue). But if the focus is on the 40, this might just be an area where they punt, and decide that it is more important to focus on the section approaching it (36th/Fremont Place). There would be no need to focus on 35th itself for the same reason there is no need to focus on Nickerson or Dexter.
At best it does help a little bit, but it doesn’t address the problem holistically. It is again focused on a route, rather than the overall network. This is one of the major problems with the RapidRide concept. It basically grew out of the world of rail projects. If you are building a rail project, then it is basically stand-alone. It may be part of a larger system, but that particular section does not exist now. Not as rail.
But that isn’t true with the buses. You might have a perfectly good route that has one congested part, and that’s it. It would be silly to convert to rail, so they convert to “BRT”. But the only significant improvement is fixing that little section. Now you’ve spent a bundle rebranding the route (and locking yourself into that route) when all you really needed to do was fix that piece.
We really don’t need to overhaul routes and promote them to “RapidRide”, we need fix various pieces.
@Ross
> It is again focused on a route, rather than the overall network
While I kinda understand what you’re getting at. If sdot/king county had tried to add bat lanes to nickelson, westlake and dexter at the same time such a project would have politically imploded.
Regarding major corridors with multiple bus routes sdot/king county is lookin at the Stewart street and Jackson street.
Focusing on a “network” is just too diffuse for a concrete project for transit supporters and easier to die by a thousand cuts.
I mean if instead of a the couple mile long bat lanes for the 40 we had a bunch of smaller bat lanes for the 62, 40, 31/32 (idk some Fremont bridge transit access project) it’d be a lot smaller benefit for each is individual transit project probably leading to its defeat
I’m saying that Fesler is counting chickens before they hatch. The money that would have come from the Feds for RR’s won’t be coming without the projects. So there will be LESS money overall to spend on transit. What you’re saying is that the Feds don’t pay for the capital costs in full, and that’s clearly true, so given the same income, less capital expenditures means more money for bus hours. True that.
But in his projections he doesn’t decrease the total available funds and, so, ends up over-estimating what can be done. That’s all I’m saying.
There will be more POBS transit in such a plan, but will it attract more total ridership? That’s a question that is really unanswerable. Throughout the world people seem to flock to “premium bus” services and dismiss POBS, but that might not be true in Seattle.
And you will never get anything on Denny more than a couple of short stretches of red leading to the lights at Westlake and Fairview. Bitch, moan, tantrum, march, sit-in and otherwise raise a stink and the City will still say “No!”
SDOT is not going to reduce the auto capacity of Denny by 50% for buses. It’s the only arterial between the Capitol Hill plateau and South Lake Union.
Are you aware that any grant application has to have cost estimates and benefit estimates? It’s not like FTA just doles out money on a whim.
The benefit is generally something like the number of riders benefited multiplied by the estimated time savings or reliability savings.
I’ve seen grants like this before. It’s the benefit that matters. The project can be something like “Speed and Reliability Improvements for XXX Station Area” just as easily as it can be “Speed and Reliability Improvements for RapidRide Route XXX”. I actually think that targeting a geographic area will probably yield better benefits than a long corridor where congestion is isolated to a small area along the route.
@Tom T,
“ The money that would have come from the Feds for RR’s won’t be coming without the projects. So there will be LESS money overall to spend on transit”
Ah, no.
Without new RapidRide projects there certainly won’t be new Federal funding coming in (at least for RapidRide), but that doesn’t mean “less” funding for Metro. It simply means the “same” funding for Metro.
Metro doesn’t need to chase new Federal dollars for future service, it can simply focus on improving efficiency and service delivery as a means of improving overall customer service.
Metro’s funding is relatively constant. The focus should be on doing better with what funding they have, and not be on chasing ever more elusive Federal dollars for projects that deliver ever diminishing returns on their investment
SDOT is not going to reduce the auto capacity of Denny by 50% for buses. It’s the only arterial between the Capitol Hill plateau and South Lake Union.
Right. And SDOT will never reduce the number of lanes on Westlake to one each direction. Nor will they ever just take a lane of Rainier Avenue. And yet, that is exactly what they are doing. Times change. What was once thought as unthinkable is actually happening.
If sdot/king county had tried to add bat lanes to nickelson, westlake and dexter at the same time such a project would have politically imploded.
We don’t know that. The changes for the 40 were highly controversial. I can’t emphasize that enough. We took a lane. Think about that for a second. Westlake is not a minor road. It is a major corridor and has existed in its present form for a very long time. The number of vehicles on it has only increased, as more and more cars have poured into downtown — especially the north end of downtown which is particularly well served by the area. Various private businesses (and their allies) tried to do their best to stop it, and they failed. But just think about this from a driver’s standpoint. Someone will drive along there and think “WTF?!! Why is it only one lane now? Look at all this traffic. What did Seattle do???”
They took a lane.
Regarding major corridors with multiple bus routes sdot/king county is looking at the Stewart street and Jackson street.
Good, and that is exactly the sort of thing I hope they do. Hopefully the project won’t politically implode.
Focusing on a “network” is just too diffuse for a concrete project for transit supporters and easier to die by a thousand cuts.
Or easier to implement as a series of a small improvements over time.
I mean if instead of a the couple mile long bat lanes for the 40 we had a bunch of smaller bat lanes for the 62, 40, 31/32 (idk some Fremont bridge transit access project) it’d be a lot smaller benefit for each is individual transit project probably leading to its defeat.
Huh? The changes for the 40 are great, but it is only one bus. The other buses (in total) carry a lot more people. It is quite possible the benefit would be much larger as a result.
> Or easier to implement as a series of a small improvements over time.
Ross, there’s already the transit spot program for there.
>> If sdot/king county had tried to add bat lanes to nickelson, westlake and dexter at the same time such a project would have politically imploded.
> We don’t know that. The changes for the 40 were highly controversial. I can’t emphasize that enough.
Yes I know. So do you think adding bat lanes to nickelson, westlake and dexter at the same time at the intersection of fremont would be any easier?
Like perhaps it might be more productive if you could describe what exactly you want as an alternative otherwise it is hard for me to talk about without me having to assume your example.
Some are commenting on routes 31, 32, 40, and 62 in Fremont. Several years ago, SDOT improved transit flow by deleting parallel parking in the block between North 34th and 35th streets. But now, the latest Route 40 project proposes to degrade the transfer point by shifting outbound routes 31, 32, and 62 around the corner to eastbound North 35th Street and shifting outbound Route 40 to Fremont Place North; riders transferring to/from the outbound Route 40 will have a walk that crosses two legs of the intersection. The supposed benefit is a northbound PBL in the block between North 34th and 35th streets. How is SDOT making this tradeoff? It is not clear. As a frequent cyclist, I have had no problems using that block. The PBL only seems to help those going north on Fremont Avenue North; I usually turn left to Fremont Place North; will I have more difficulty if hemmed in by the PBL infrastructure?
The Seattle Transportation Plan was aimed at solving such tradeoffs over constrained rights of way. But here, the Route 40 PBL is ahead of the STP approval.
Nearby, Nickerson Street became a three-lane arterial during the McGinn administration. Stone Way North became a three-lane arterial during the Nickels terms. Fremont-Phinney-Greenwood got their bike lanes in the 1990s. A major benefit of the road diets was to improve pedestrian crossing safety. See: https://www.feetfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Road-Rechannelization-Road-Diets1.pdf
SDOT is going to single-lane Westlake when it already single-laned and put stop-in-lane on parallel Dexter? When? And how much of Rainier is going to be single-laned? Will there be “spot” bus queue-jumps? Those can be very effective and are certainly welcome, but they aren’t “BAT lanes”.
@eddiew
> The PBL only seems to help those going north on Fremont Avenue North; I usually turn left to Fremont Place North; will I have more difficulty if hemmed in by the PBL infrastructure?
I was wondering why they were building there as well when Ross brought it up a couple threads ago.
Apparently that’s one of the last remaining gaps in the interurban north trail so that’s why the city was really prioritizing adding a bike lane there.
https://your.kingcounty.gov/GIS/web/Web/VMC/recreation/RTSMap_2013_complete.pdf (Interurban route)
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=a24b25c3142c49e194190d6a888d97e3 (bike map)
I think what we should have asked for was rerouting the trail down Phinney Ave N for that section
> SDOT is going to single-lane Westlake when it already single-laned and put stop-in-lane on parallel Dexter? When?
Dexter is actively under rebuild near thomas street single laning it though no bus lanes. They are just channelizing it down.
> And how much of Rainier is going to be single-laned? Will there be “spot” bus queue-jumps? Those can be very effective and are certainly welcome, but they aren’t “BAT lanes”.
They are extending the north bound BAT lane from Walden to Grand Street around a mile as part of phase 2 but it’s still in the design phase. I’m not sure if it’ll actually be implemented
https://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs/programs/transit-program/rainier-ave-s-bus-only-lane
For the next section from jackson to grand street (with the i90 interchange) it’s probably the most difficult section to get BAT lanes.
The transportation plan does talk about it and it seems their (current?) plan is to attempt doing another FAB lane.
> this project will transform Rainier Ave S from S Jackson St to S McClellan St
> Repaving and redesigning some areas of the street to better support transit and freight travel, including reallocating space at the curb to support its many uses and potential bus- and freight only lanes
https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/SDOT/STP/Feb2024/STP_Appendix_A_FINAL_v2.pdf#page=73 (project 67)
“put stop-in-lane on parallel Dexter?”
Dexter got in-lane bus stops around eight years ago. The cars have to wait behind buses in the single lane each direction, like the Roosevelt makeover. Finally cars waiting for buses instead of buses waiting for cars.
“And how much of Rainier is going to be single-laned?”
One lane for cars, one for buses. I can’t see SDOT ripping out the transit-priority lanes it just built in the past couple years.
Mike, right; Dexter has been stop-in-lane for quite a while. It actually seems like it’s more than eight years, but you probably know better than I do.
I guess that the Freight and Bus only lanes are actually going to happen on Westlake south of the bridge, so I stand corrected. I think with the loss of capacity and the delays from stop-in-lane on Dexter preventing re-routes that way there will be serious backups on Westlake and at the end of the “evaluation period” the city will sandblast the paint away.
The southbound left-turn-from-the-curb lane at the Westlake/Ninth North intersection is a good idea and since there’s room there, will stay. But the FAB lanes are temporary.
@Tom
> I guess that the Freight and Bus only lanes are actually going to happen on Westlake south of the bridge, so I stand corrected. I think with the loss of capacity and the delays from stop-in-lane on Dexter preventing re-routes that way there will be serious backups on Westlake and at the end of the “evaluation period” the city will sandblast the paint away.
> SDOT is going to single-lane Westlake when it already single-laned and put stop-in-lane on parallel Dexter
Dexter Ave isn’t undergoing any changes for the transit plus 40, I’m kind of confused what you’re talking about here, unless if you’re talking about Ross’ proposal.
Westlake single lane northbound isn’t really that big of a deal any more capacity wise. The section of westlake through SLU is already a single lane for most of it. The main part is just to keep 2 lanes at the fremont bridge intersection which SDOT has kept as general lanes.
at the end of the “evaluation period” the city will sandblast the paint away.
Are you saying they will convert the FAB lanes to BAT lanes or you are you saying they will convert them to general purpose? I could definitely see them being converted to BAT lanes. I could also see them limiting the time they can be used by trucks (like New York does). The freight part of FAB is an experiment.
The bus part is not. There is no way they are going to convert them back into general-purpose lanes. I’m pretty sure the city has never done that, and I don’t see them doing that in the future.
“It actually seems like it’s more than eight years, but you probably know better than I do.”
After I wrote that I thought maybe it was ten or more years. I was trying not to overestimate it. But I’ve experienced those inline stops and thought about the bike lanes behind them since the 62 started in 2016, and they may go back further, to the time of the C/D and E restructures around 2012. There were a lot of restructures and proposals around the 5, 17, 26, 28, and 62 on Dexter, Westlake, and Aurora, and I don’t remember what order they went or which all were implemented.
Was there a gap between when the 17 was reduced to peak-only and when the 62 started, when Dexter had an intermediate route? Did the 17 and the 26/28 exchange places between Dexter and Westlake? Or was that a proposal that wasn’t implemented? I can’t remember all those. Just that there’s always been a route on Dexter, but whether it was the 17, 26/28, or another, I don’t remember.
“Are you saying they will convert the FAB lanes to BAT lanes or you are you saying they will convert them to general purpose?”
The FAB lanes are a pilot experiment. If the city is dissatisfied with them, by default they’d revert to general-purpose lanes. The city would have to pass another policy to convert them to BAT lanes. The momentum may be going in that direction, since FAB lanes are a lite version of that (and address necessary freight capacity and speed), but when the city actually bites the bullet and installs BAT lanes could be who knows how many years away. Aurora and 15th Ave W still don’t have them for more than a few blocks at a time, and the buses bog down peak hours in the congestion.
I don’t know that the 62 would benefit from BAT lanes, but there are plenty of out-of-lane stops where it gets trapped in traffic: Stone & 38th, a few stops on Dexter that don’t have bus islands, and most of the stops along 65th come to mind. In the absence of actual enforcement of RCW 46.61.220, extending the curb or adding a bus island would be a great alternative. Where there’s bike lanes, raising the bike lane could help as well, and it would deter illegal parking in the bike lane, which is basically a continuous problem at the stops at Roosevelt Station right now.
Of course all of those fixes pale in comparison to reducing the impact of Fremont Bridge openings. The Coast Guard probably can’t be distracted from their hyperfocus on sail boaters over land dwellers, but short bus/BAT lanes with queue jumps could help a lot.
“Off-board payment speeds up the bus, but if it’s only 2 or 3 boarding per mile, it’s not saving a lot of time.”
I don’t believe off-board payment speeds up the existing lines much anyway. Whenever I ride it’s only one or two people per stop, not ten or twenty. That only happens at one or two stations peak hours. ORCA readers at the back doors offer an additional way to pay that didn’t exist in earlier bus models.
When San Fransisco went with off-board payment they dramatically improved dwell times. So in general it does help. But it depends on the route. For an express route, dwell times are fairly short anyway. There aren’t that many people getting on and off the bus. A bus like the 7, in contrast, really should have off-board payment.
But as I wrote elsewhere, it should not be based on a route. It is the same basic idea as right-of-way. Focus on areas, not routes. I could easily see all of downtown as well as various areas around Link stations having off-board payment for all the buses.
Consider what Route 358X fare collection was like before the E Line. Boarding through the front door took serious minutes. Post-Covid ridership is lower. Consider fare collection in fall 2018.
And yet I only see one, two, or sometimes three people boarding the E at any stop along the line. Aurora Village might get five because it’s the terminus and the transfer from Swift. Pike and Virginia might get a few more but not a lot more. I’ve seen a couple dozen get off at 46th peak hours so they might get on in the mornings. But that’s just one stop. Or three if you count Pike and Virginia.
@RossB yeah but Muni also went to 90% fare evasion with it and only marginally faster. It’s like 40-50% now here in Seattle but Muni took it hard with all door payment. If you aren’t doing fare inspectors, passing by a driver at least picks up a larger chunk of fares.
@Poncho,
Farebox recovery with buses is so low that increased fare evasion doesn’t really have a major effect on the overall budget.
But you are correct, if Metro did go to all door boarding on all buses then a piece of that puzzle would need to be increased fare enforcement. Otherwise fare evasion would be very high, as it already is on RapidRide.
I’d use a bit heavier hand than what ST is doing. Maybe officers in recognizable uniforms with ballistic vests and equipped with tasers (as a minimum).
The new series of buses have mounts at the rear doors for ORCA readers, and some buses have the readers installed. That will probably spread to the entire fleet gradually, as low-floor buses did. The readers cost thousands of dollars each, so buying thousands of them at once is a lot of money, when Metro has only a limited amount of capital resources.
The 44 doesn’t officially have off-board or all-door payment, but the ETBs all have rear-door ORCA readers now. The difference that has made is substantial, and even without fare enforcement most people are paying (probably helps that a good chunk of the riders are UWers with U-PASSes).
I’ve noticed that the Gilligs (mostly used on the Eastside and South King) have rear-door readers as well, plus at least a few of the non-RR XDE60s. Hopefully Metro can get more installed, and find a way to do fare enforcement efficiently and equitably.
1. Worse yet is when suburbs use transit money to build bus pullouts into sidewalks.
@Al S,
It’s about time someone said the obvious thing about RapidRide out loud, and that is that RapidRide has clearly run its course.
RapidRide has always been more about marketing than truly “Rapid”. Granted, off board payment and increased stop spacing speed things up, but even with all that, at the end of the day even venerable RR routes like RR A still only manage to achieve about 1/3 of the actual posted speed limit.
And recent Metro RapidRide installations have become more like RR F — long circuitous routes where most of the stops are actually just “stops” with onboard payment and not true “stations” with offboard payment.
Defenders of RapidRide will say that it isn’t as much about where you pay as it is more about all-door boarding and stop spacing. Fair enough. But if you can get most of the benefit of RapidRide by going to all-door boarding with an ORCA reader or 2 at each door, or by going to greater stop spacing, then can’t we simply do that without RapidRide?
Metro is already trying to put most of its routes on stop diets to improve efficiency and increase speed. That is as it should be.
So if the only remaining advantage of RapidRide then becomes all-door boarding, wouldn’t a better, more pro-transit approach simply be to implement all-door boarding on all Metro routes? Because at some point it should be easier to install ORCA readers at all doors on all Metro routes than to keep implementing more and more RR routes with less and less benefit.
But I will give Metro credit for a great marketing campaign. And I actually do like the retro style, sort of old school Seattle Transit style branding. It looks good and sounds good. It’s much better branding than Sound Transit’s “Ride the Wave” and that slow looking wave pattern.
> RapidRide has always been more about marketing than truly “Rapid”. Granted, off board payment and increased stop spacing speed things up, but even with all that, at the end of the day even venerable RR routes like RR A still only manage to achieve about 1/3 of the actual posted speed limit.
> Metro is already trying to put most of its routes on stop diets to improve efficiency and increase speed. That is as it should be.
Generally agreed. Back then rapidride was a bit different about the added frequency from buying more buses and they needed a campaign to allow for stop consolidation as it was quite contentious but nowadays metro is implement to stop consolidation even without a rapidride program. And frequency is just tied to the number of riders. And for bus lanes they were doing capital projects expanding the road like in shoreline but nowadays many of the BAT lanes are from existing road conversions so there’s less capital dollars needed there as well.
I think we should just move forward with a lot more transit-plus ones on more routes.
@WL,
I generally agree. We’ve clearly gotten to the point of diminishing returns with RapidRide.
If most of the benefit of RapidRide comes from all-door boarding and reduced stop spacing, and if Metro is all ready doing stop diets, then that sort of just leaves all-door boarding as the only real benefit of RapidRide.
Metro can add all-door boarding to all Metro routes by adding onboard ORCA readers to all buses and then beefing up their fare enforcement. It actually should be cheaper overall than implementing more RR routes.
And what is Metro going to do after RR Z anyhow? Start over with RR AA, AB, AC, etc.
“And what is Metro going to do after RR Z anyhow? Start over with RR AA, AB, AC, etc.”
Presumably twenty-six will be enough to saturate King County’s major corridors. That’s over three times as many as we have now. SDOT had a half-dozen outlined, and three are in process, so that’s a big chunk of the 6-12 letters that would probably be reserved for Seattle.
I’m hearing more of major changes to Rapid Rides than outright new lines for the long range planning.. like RR extensions taking over non RR lines for segments, splicing lines, etc.
I thought neighborhoods that want to keep their regular bus route and not switch to Rapid Ride were anti-transit.
I see you’ve reached level 4 in “How to Troll”. Are there really people who oppose RapidRide in their neighborhood? Why? Because of construction? The construction is less than light rail or highway projects.
Wasn’t the Eastlake Community Council called anti-transit because they didn’t want the J Line, and wanted to keep the route 70?
It was more than that. They didn’t want the bus lanes. They didn’t want the bike lanes either. In other words, they would have opposed the work if it was RapidRide or not.
It is also worth pointing out that the council was not united on this idea and that the council members are not elected by the community as a whole. They are basically a club.
Good, you found a concrete example. So what was the situation there? They didn’t want to lose street-parking spaces, and didn’t care about all the transit riders who wanted better service. At least one member resigned from the council over this position. The majority of the Eastlake neighborhood wanted the RapidRide line. So it wasn’t the majority of residents opposing it, just a loud squeaky wheel.
A Metro rep told me the suburbs love their RapidRide A, B, and E. They think it’s the crane’s brains or the bus’s wheels. Seattle is a tougher crowd to satisfy because we have higher expectations: we want more speed and frequency than Metro can deliver.
Settling for less than RapidRide, as in this article, is different from not wanting the upgrades. This is just a second-best to get more service out quickly, because Metro can’t deliver enough of the upgrades fast enough to be worth the limited resources available now, not when so many other transit gaps exist.
It’s similar to how some of us wanted Link to Ballard to complete the subway network and eliminate the long overhead of getting into and out of Ballard. But ST has managed to make the Link design so much worse than the representative alignment that it won’t even be able to do that for those not coming from the same Rainier/SeaTac/Tacoma line. So maybe we should just fall back to bus upgrades for Ballard now.
I am against these community councils being empowered enough to throw a wrench into key elements of voter approved projects. The author wasn’t arguing against rapid ride in lieu of nothing and likely would still support bus lanes in east lake but as a part of a much larger and less piecemeal bus network improvement plan
What was especially egregious however was the community council ousting any members who supported the project. They very obviously only wanted to derail the project and they themselves seemed to not actually care about hearing community input
“I am against these community councils being empowered enough to throw a wrench into key elements of voter approved projects.”
The Eastlake Community Council didn’t throw a wrench; Metro overrode their objections. In other cases community councils or neighborhood groups have been able to force agencies to water down projects, as in NE 65th, 35th NE, and 23rd, or various Link station locations and TOD, or the three-way crisis in South Kirkland where ST, the City of Kirkland, and a “Save Our Trail” group wanted three different things, but not in this case.
Sam makes a valid point on messaging. It’s hard for voters to understand that many small projects can be move valuable than a few highly visible projects.
The value of minor projects – that they can dodge worthless EIS reviews – also makes them less visible to the public.
Cities and agencies can raise their profile by promoting the benefits of all of them together. There’s solid evidence that this makes a more liveable city. It’s not only large single projects that can be marketed; that’s just what the cities/agencies have chosen to put their marketing efforts into.
I don’t think it makes much difference. If you look at the opposition to the 40 and the J they are very similar. Basically a handful of businesses worrying about parking. In both cases they made quite a bit of noise, but eventually were unsuccessful at stopping the project. At least it appears that way.
Write accurate headlines
@Mike
Agreed, you might want to edit it the title. It sounds like they are ending rapidride if one is just glancing at the title.
All the title needs is an exclamation point, and I think people will get it is an opinion piece.
I added a sentence to the first paragraph to clarify.
Mike, Suggestions for a more accurate headline:
Stop RapidRide Expansions.
Has RapidRide Run Its Course?
Planning Beyond RapidRide.
A note about the use of “express” in Metro Connects (terminology but not the service):
ST already uses the term for long-distance regional service mostly on freeways. That’s the typical way it’s used around the country too.
What Metro Connects calls “express” is typically called “limited” in other cities. However, Metro does have a legacy of using the “express” term for limited service (like Route 9X).
And let’s not forget that Stride 1 and 2 is a very different kind of stop spacing than Stride 3 is.
Terminology is a confusing thing.
Some of Metro’s Express lines will have long nonstop segments, as the 101 does and the future Seattle-Kent-Auburn line would. But the agencies should really distinguish between limited-stop corridors like Stride, Swift, the 9, 15, and 28, and even the 512 and 550 — vs routes that are mostly long nonstop point-to-point services like the 554 and 577. San Francisco used to have three levels of service on Geary Avenue: a full-time local, a daytime limited, and a peak express. That makes more sense than our current mishmash of overlapping and redundant terminology.
I think rather than saying more of “buses” what I’d ask for is more “transit-plus” corridors rather than rapidride.
They can implement the bus lanes just as well as rapidride programs.
https://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs/programs/transit-program/transit-plus-multimodal-corridor-program
For instance the route 5 and 36 improvements, in the past it’d need to be a rapidride program to get the political buy in for the bus lanes. I don’t think it’s quite as needed anymore.
> 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
> Purchasing buses, painting bus lanes, and installing transit signal priority is, by comparison, a very simple task.
I was kinda curious how much is spent on the rapidrides. I was hoping to find a cost breakdown on what is actually spent on bat lanes/buses but unfortunately the documentation is not consistent.
Rapidride H surprisingly I could not find any good breakdowns. I found out it cost 150 million dollars in total, but then other document’s say the actual seattle section was only 77 million. And then out of that 77 million actually 34 million was for the asphalt and concrete repaving only 33 million is actually actually for transit improvements?
For rapidride J, the closest cost breakdown I could find was back in 2017.
https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/SDOT/TransitProgram/RapidRide/Roosevelt/2017_CostEstimatesMemo.pdf
Rapidride E and F spent most of the money on new buses.
For rapidride e. 6 million on TSP, 5 million stations, 1 million real time info, 25 million on new buses. (2010 dollars)
But it’s a bit inaccurate for rapidride E, because Shoreline had a separate 53 million dollar project to expand aurora avenue and add BAT lanes.
https://seattletransitblog.com/2012/06/09/rapidride-e-and-f-cost-breakdown/
The transit plus 40 costs 26 million dollars (2022ish)
transit plus 7 costs 8.5 million dollars
rapidride R would cost 90 million dollars with 10 million on BAT lanes, 17 million on transit signal priority, 17 million on stations. (None on buses?) 15 million on trolley wire, and 18 million on sidewalks.
I kinda wonder if king county metro has a better report somewhere detailing the cost breakdowns for all past projects.
more “transit-plus” corridors rather than rapidride.
Yes. Focus on corridors over routes. Focus on the network over corridors. See https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/03/03/no-more-rapidride/#comment-927888 for examples.
This is wildly innumerate.
We’re not going to do these projects requiring $50-$100 million of local funds, we’re going to do this other thing that has a revenue shortfall of $18 BILLION dollars.
It’s also short funding for 3.6 million annual service hours vs the funded 2050 baseline, and more versus current levels. Fesler glides over that as though it were inconsequential. It’s about as many hours as Metro provides now.
That’s about another 2% on the sales tax, if the Urbanist cared to do the math.
And they think we’re going to do it all in a decade, which will multiply those costs because there are no longer 30 years of baseline revenues, but just 10.
Even if this imaginary pile of money were to present itself, and no plausible county funding measure gets close, there’s no base capacity to store the buses and it takes more than a decade to open a base if there’s funding (did I mention there isn’t).
It’s all just fantasy projections.
Fesler may have been too optimistic when it comes to what a different focus could provide, but he has the right idea. The RapidRide process works basically like this:
1) Pick a route for a RapidRide bus. This is often picked based on geography (i. e. select a part of the county that doesn’t have RapidRide). There appears to be little time spend focusing on the areas that need the most work.
2) Do the planning for the route. This often involves an appeal to the feds for matching funds. The work will eventually include some BAT lanes, so will likely need to do a lot of outreach.
3) Do the work. This involves more than paint, but fancy bus stops, different-colored buses, off board-payment and a commitment to a certain level of service (to please the feds).
So you end up with something like the B or F line. These are not particularly fast nor frequent. They perform about average in terms of the various metrics (riders per service hour, etc.). There are many buses — including buses that are stuck in traffic much of the day — that perform better. A better approach would be:
1) Look at what areas of the city have the most congestion. Also consider how many buses are effected by the congestion, and how many riders are ultimately effected.
2) Do some preliminary analysis in terms of the cost to fix the worst problems. If the project looks huge than by all means, try and get federal backing. Otherwise don’t worry about it.
3) Prioritize based on the cost and benefit. Basically try and get the biggest bang for the buck.
4) Repeat step one.
The same goes for off-board payment. It should not be focused on routes, but on areas. This again should be prioritized based on value.
This doesn’t stand or fall on the amount of Fesler’s estimates or assumptions. Any amount of transit increase it can afford is good. Not doing it is shooting ourselves in the foot, and ignoring one of the best opportunities to improve transit we have.
I’m copying a comment from the Open Thread:
I think Fesler raises many good points. In general I very much agree with him. Rapid Ride involves picking a particular route and then spending way too much time, money and energy on that route. That is the wrong approach. We should prioritize corridors over routes. We should prioritize the network over corridors.
Allow me to cite a few examples. The 45 runs on 85th. Pretty soon it will be joined by a second bus (the 61) which will connect the corridor with Northgate. In the future we might send the 40 there (replacing that part of the 61). It it is an important corridor that experiences congestion. We should improve it. Corridors over routes.
The area around the Fremont Bridge is often congested. When a bridge goes up, it takes a while for traffic to clear. Seven different bus routes go over the bridge. Several other buses could be sent there as well. It is a very important area when it comes to the network, as it effects multiple corridors. Network over corridors.
Or consider off-board payment. This is one of the big selling points of RapidRide. Being able to pay at the bus stop is nice. But it doesn’t have to be tied to one bus. All buses in San Fransisco are completely off-board and it has been a huge success. Various bus stops downtown are now off-board and this has worked out well. I could see this expanding, even if it didn’t cover the whole city. For example, the buses at Northgate Transit Center require payment at the front even though probably 99% have already paid for some sort of transit when they get there. Off-board payment should be more widespread.
Same goes for fancy bus stops, or “station”. These have nice seats and kiosks showing when the bus is expected. These definitely add value. But they should be tied to the area, not a particular route. In many cases they are.
The one unique thing that RapidRide offers is branding. I see little value in this. If anything, the special colored buses are actually worse. They limit flexibility. For example I’ve proposed swapping the tails of the 40 and D. Send the 40 across 85th to Northgate and extend the D to Northgate via Holman Road and Northgate Way. This would great improve the network. Doing this becomes more difficult because the D is RapidRide. So yes, I think abandoning RapidRide and simply trying to improve the network as much as possible is a better approach.
I have other thoughts but I’ll make them different comments.
~If anything, the special colored buses are actually worse. They limit flexibility.
Ok, but not actually? I’ve seen colored RR buses on non-RapidRide routes tons of times. Not every day but at least a few dozen times. The route number is on the front screen and all works just fine like a regular bus.
Metro is using the vehicles it has in a pretty nimble manner – let’s encourage this!!
This is actually one of the best arguments against streetcars. In Seattle’s case, it perfectly describes why we can’t get better frequency to make the lines more useful.
Even if the lines eventually get connected, there is no plan to add frequency on the existing lines. That’s the main reason I’m not enthused about the First Ave Streetcar.
Your point also applies to the G Line, and its special-design buses.
The issue with the CCC is downtown has a plethora of ultra-frequent north-south transit within two blocks of 1st. Many other neighborhoods need evening frequency to downtown and full-time frequency between neighboring villages. This seems higher priority than the CCC because it’s more people and they’re more isolated. (They can’t walk two blocks to ultra-frequent alternatives.)
@Brent White.
“ Even if the lines eventually get connected, there is no plan to add frequency on the existing lines.”
Ah, no, that is incorrect.
The leading operational plan for the completed SC system is to operate it as two lines. Basically one line from Eastlake through downtown to somewhere around KS Station, and the other line from CapHill through downtown to somewhere near 5th.
The two lines would interline through downtown to provide double the frequency.
This is exactly analogous to what will happen with Link when 1-Link and 2-Link get interlined from IDS to LTC to provide double the frequency.
The initial plan was 10 minutes on each line, so 5 minutes in the overlapping segment. The overlapping segment is Westlake to CID. That’s only one mile with 5-minute service, and it’s the same mile that has all that parallel service. Since then the frequencies have been adjusted up and down, so the current plan may be less than that. But that’s the relative paradigm.
@Lazarus
That is not the leading plan, the main plan is the single loop one. Even after spending 400 million dollars plan the frequency would be around 8 minutes or so.
From the operational section:
> For example, if ten-minute headways (service intervals) were provided on each loop, streetcars would arrive every five minutes in the overlapping service area. However, the operator of the Seattle Streetcar, King County Metro Transit, analyzed this service plan and
determined that the overlapping loops would be difficult to manage and would likely be less efficient than operating a single loop throughout the entire alignment of the completed project. Therefore, the “single loop” operating plan is assumed for the Project going forward.
@Mike Orr,
The CCC is 1.3 miles long, so the interlined part of the completed system is at least that long. Probably closer to 1.5 miles on the grid.
But the important thing is that those 1.5 miles are in the highest ridership demand section of the completed system, basically right through the heart of downtown and connecting to Link, Sounder, Amtrak, and buses at CID.
That is a good thing.
> But the important thing is that those 1.5 miles are in the highest ridership demand section of the completed system, basically right through the heart of downtown and connecting to Link, Sounder, Amtrak, and buses at CID.
And the reason this is better than a bus on that corridor is because…????
@Elizabeth — Yes, agreed. RapidRide limits flexibility. I may have mentioned that somewhere else (and if so, apologies for repeating myself).
For example, consider the 40 and the D. The D ends rather unceremoniously by a QFC. It fails to make connections to Greenwood Avenue, Aurora Avenue, Meridian or the Northgate Transit Center. The 40 meanwhile, overlaps the D and happens to make all of those connections. To get to Holman Road it makes a turn (unlike the D). Thus there are several flaws in the routing there: Failed connections, overlapping routs, excessive turns. There is a fairly easy way to fix this. Send the 40 across on 85th to Northgate that way (the future route of the 61). Have the D follow the current pathway of the 40. This would greatly improve connectivity in the area, and not cost much at all.
There is just one problem: The D is RapidRide. You would need more RapidRide buses at a minimum. I’ve actually been told by a Metro planner that this would be a stumbling block. Not just the bus stops (which are supposed to be fancier) but the buses themselves.
This is exactly analogous to what will happen with Link when 1-Link and 2-Link get interlined from IDS to LTC to provide double the frequency.
Which sounds nice until you remember that Third Avenue has buses running a lot more frequently. This is another major weakness of the streetcar: frequency. It is like a kid bragging about the fact that he can now jump over a bar three feet above the ground. Nice job, junior! You do know though that the guy down the street can easily clear six feet though, right? Right?
The spine on Third Avenue is world class. Buses arrive every few seconds. In contrast, the goal for the overlapping part of the streetcar is five minutes. It wouldn’t take very many buses to dwarf that in terms of frequency. Divert a few to First Avenue and you have better frequency on First at no extra cost.
Because that is the other issue with the streetcar. Service is not free. Even after we spend all this money putting down the rail, it isn’t like Link. It isn’t fast or efficient (when it comes riders per mile). We still have to run the trams and we are running them on what is essentially an extra, redundant path.
“The D is RapidRide. You would need more RapidRide buses at a minimum. I’ve actually been told by a Metro planner that this would be a stumbling block.”
When the D was being designed, there were calls to extend it to Northgate. Metro was somewhat open to that, but couldn’t because the D’s budget couldn’t stretch enough to fit it. The D and 40 were created at the same time, so the Carkeek-Northgate segment was assigned to the 40 instead of the D.
Extending the D to Northgate now raises the same problem.
1) What Fesler wrote about RapidRide goes double for the streetcar. The cost to build it is higher, and the corridor can be served with very little expense by simply shifting a few buses there. Even from a service standpoint it is a poor choice.
2) He blames the RapidRide G for bad frequency in the area. That isn’t the problem. The G is actually fairly short and fast — and thus doesn’t cost much to operate. The problem is that the rest of the network ignores it. We will run buses right next to it (buses stuck in traffic) just because we are afraid of changing the routes. With a little bit of work the area could have much better frequency ( https://seattletransitblog.com/2023/08/30/high-frequency-network-surrounding-rapidride-g/). A high frequency route (like the 3/4, the 7 or the G) should lead to better frequency in the area as buses should complement it, not compete with it. The fact that Metro took the wrong approach shows a lack of imagination by the planners.
3) Unfortunately, a lot of the work that SDOT does includes other things. The J Line includes a lot of bicycle work. It is common for them to do utility work and then attach it to the transit project. Then there is the federal matching, which he mentioned. Thus even though I support a lot of these ideas, it may still take a while to implement a project that is “mostly paint”. For example, the changes to the 40 (which will not be RapidRide) will involve work on the water main (https://content.govdelivery.com/bulletins/gd/WASEATTLE-38e0b9e?wgt_ref=WASEATTLE_WIDGET_420).
I’m not quite sure if moving away from rapidride projects would actually mean more bus lanes/buses.
Part of the reason bus lanes get implemented is that if one wants to receive federal dollars for these transit projects there’s a minimum amount of transit lanes one must implement or else they’ll deny the project.
And then even for the extra money spent, a lot of it just was never earmarked for transit in the first place but lumped together I guess so it looks better. Like the rapidride H as I said earlier it looks like it spend 150 million dollars in the seattletimes article, but actually the seattle portion was only 80 million and then out of that only half 40 million was actually for transit. The other 40 million for concrete/asphalt repaving.
> 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.
I mean that’s more about if one wants to cut out the concrete/asphault repaving, stations, sidewalk reconstruction and/or trolleywires. We could build cheaper ‘rapidrides’ like the original A, B, C, D, E*, F ones.
* concrete/asphalt — a lot of this seems to already be from the “car budget”.
* stations — you’d remove off boarding payments but it’s certainly a possibly skippable item as seen with the transit plus.
* sidewalk reconstruction — a large portion of the transit budget does go towards this. it’s not bad to do but certainly tying it together can limit rapidride expansions
* trolleywires — I’ve talked about this before but trolleywire expansions are really really expensive. it’s the main reason why rapidride J got truncated twice.
The main thing is that the rapidrides need focus on transit as the main goal.
There’s been too many other items added on
* environment with expensive electrification
* sidewalk reconstruction
* fixing roads for cars with concrete/asphalt rebuilding
* bikes with protected bike lanes that require reconfiguring the street
All of the above are good goals and items to implement, but when one adds on so many side objectives it becomes really expensive to implement rapidrides. I mean Seattle’s “transit plus” is practically more similar to the old original “rapidrides” at this point than the newer ‘rapidride projects’ with so many other items added on.
>I mean Seattle’s “transit plus” is practically more similar to the old original “rapidrides” at this point than the newer ‘rapidride projects’ with so many other items added on.
This is basically Fesler’s argument in a nutshell, with the logical conclusion that the time/effort spent building a couple RapidRides would be better spent working on more “Transit-Plus Multimodal Corridors” (TPMCs). If the difference between a TPMC (deliverable in <5 years) and a RapidRide corridor (5-15 years to deliver) project is that the Feds will pitch in for major capital upgrades, is the delay worth it?
That isn’t quite Fesler’s argument. He talks about implementing frequency increases with large bus bases and buying lots of buses. But that will require a lot more capital and operational dollars probably even more than the rapidrides.
> a much more frequent, expansive transit service network this decade
Honestly, as Dan Ryan noted, I don’t think Fesler has really done a cursory analysis behind/thought about what it costs to implement higher frequency.
Ah, I was treating Fesler’s proposal as a separate argument. I read the proposal for new funding as building off of his argument that RapidRide projects are inefficient.
Fesler: “We are therefore left with a binary choice: a much more frequent, expansive transit service network this decade or a modestly more frequent, expansive transit service network many decades from now. ”
This argument applies to Metro’s budget today, not just a fantastical new revenue source. Whether or not a $10+B capital and service program is realistic isn’t really the point of the arguments for or against new RapidRide corridors.
Any significant increase is better than none, even if it doesn’t reach all the way to the Metro Connects level. Fesler talks about lots of 10-minute service. I’m skeptical of that, because Seattle’s TBD only raised enough for about six 10-minute routes during 2016-2019. But full-time 15-minute service including evenings on all “Frequent” corridors would be a good smaller step and easier to achieve.
There’s already a new bus base underway; it’s supposed to come online in the late 2020s.
The money available can go further with regular bus service and spot street improvements than it can with RapidRide lines. RapidRide requires purchasing a fleet of distinct buses up front; it can’t reuse existing idle buses or interchange them with other routes as daily needs arise (at least not in a launch plan); RapidRide buses cost more to operate; and RapidRide requires a full suite of projects all at once (distinct stations, real-time signs, ORCA readers, all the street upgrades in one sweep). Metro’s maximum bus-vehicle utilization was in 2016-2020 when Seattle’s TBD was at its highest and peak demand was higher. Currently many buses are sidelined waiting for parts or maintenance-workers’ time, but that’s temporary and will probably be history by the time this program starts. It can’t start for at least a couple years anyway, to count for the election and ramp-up time.
Part of the reason bus lanes get implemented is that if one wants to receive federal dollars for these transit projects there’s a minimum amount of transit lanes one must implement or else they’ll deny the project.
But the tail shouldn’t wag the dog. You shouldn’t pursue federal dollars as your starting point. Your starting point should be to focus on the most cost effective way to improve transit. If it turns out that the project is big, then by all means go for federal funding. But quite often it means a fairly minor change that can make a huge difference. A few BAT lanes here and there can make a huge difference. If we wait around for all these routes to become RapidRide we will be waiting for decades to see significant improvement. It is just the wrong approach.
For example, consider the 3/4. You could make the case for converting it to RapidRide, or you could just address the area that slows it down the most. Add BAT/Bus lanes downtown and then the bus is significantly faster. The project would not be that expensive — not for the planning (especially since we wouldn’t be asking for federal match) — and not for the work itself (which is just painting). I’m not saying it would be trivial, but it would be less work than that done for the 40. The goal would not be to “fix” the entire 3/4, but only address the worst spot.
It is worth noting that quite often the transit project is basically just a public utilities project. The feds won’t pitch in to fix your outdated sewer system, but they will chip in for fancy buses. Then as part of the work for the fancy buses you fix the old sewer lines, everyone wins. I get that. I understand why agencies would want to do that. But I’m not convinced that is happening either. It would be quite reasonable to have SDOT and SPU sit down and try to find overlapping projects and then go ahead and create RapidRide projects based on that. But I don’t think that is happening either. I think Metro is picking arbitrary lines for RapidRide, then when the local utility is notified, they get excited and tell them that they should dig up the street at the same time, since we really need to fix those old pipes.
The point being there should be only a handful of big projects — projects worthy of federal funding — and there is no reason why it should be based on a route (instead of an area). For example, imagine if Seattle decided it wanted to have all off-board payment (like San Fransisco). This would involve a ton of new ORCA readers on the street. This would be a huge project, and of course they would seek federal help. But every bus would be the same color.
“Part of the reason bus lanes get implemented is that if one wants to receive federal dollars for these transit projects…”
The reason bus lanes get implemented is to get service up to a normal best-practice level. It’s not like the feds are giving grants for trivial luxuries, if only we apply for them. All grants require local matching funds, so the more we get, the more of our own money we have to spend. It’s not like you just get money from a tree and do nothing for it, or get it for a yacht or gold-plated city hall roofs.
Fesler’s point is sound, but does not go far enough. Faster fare collection and all-door boarding and alighting with proof-of-payment fare collection may be the best aspect of RR and the reason for its faster travel times. Longer stop spacing has been adopted network wide but takes time to implement. RR is good; we just need all routes to be RR-like. The riders probably do not care about the color of the bus. Metro Connects was overly ambitious and over estimated Metro’s ability to implement the capital improvements. The good thing was that the suburbs wanted more and better transit. SDOT and Metro chose a awkward phasing of the seven lines in Seattle that was slow.
Fesler’s suggestion to go for a countywide TBD and big funding boost was in the plans before Covid. As office work and transit are reset in the face of societal issues and we still have an operator shortage, it will be difficult. Elections with large turnouts are the time to ask voters about transit.
https://www.sfmta.com/getting-around/muni/fares/proof-payment
Yes, this. The basic problem with RapidRide is that focuses on one particular route. That is the wrong approach. We should focus on the areas that can provide the biggest benefit.
> The riders probably do not care about the color of the bus. Metro Connects was overly ambitious and over estimated Metro’s ability to implement the capital improvements
It’s not that Metro was overambitious with the number of rapidrides; it’s that they added on too many extra items to the new rapidrides.
I mean they managed to implement 6 rapidrides during a period with falling sales tax and then took them a decade to implement another 3? if metro wants to implement a lot more “rapidrides” just go back to doing the bare bone implementations as was done previously. (aka closer to transit plus in seattle)
WL: close. There were five RR lines is Transit Now, 2006. The recession hit and extra revenue was needed, so that was fixed by council action, but under 40/40/20, the sixth F Line was added to the south. The funding also completed the partnership routes, that were mostly weak.
Who’s “they”? The G, H, and J are SDOT projects from Move Seattle. The city just got Metro to adopt them as RapidRide rather than creating another brand, and got Burien to contribute to its part of the H (as I think it was already doing with the 120). The I is all Metro.
“If metro wants to implement a lot more “rapidrides” just go back to doing the bare bone implementations as was done previously”
I don”t see any difference between the earlier A-F and the later H-R. They’re all modest upgrades. The G is unique because it has center transit-only lanes in the middle. That’s not clearly in the “earlier” or “later” groups since it was started right in between.
> I don”t see any difference between the earlier A-F and the later H-R. They’re all modest upgrades. The G is unique because it has center transit-only lanes in the middle. That’s not clearly in the “earlier” or “later” groups since it was started right in between.
Rapidride H had a total street reconstruction along delridge. That’s how they added on those street trees in the median.
Rapidride J has been changed heavily from the original implementation. Also it’s relatively expensive overhead electric wires meant it couldn’t expand far. Also they have to rebuild some of the intersections. for instance at aloha with the streetcar in the way and trying to implement bike lanes https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/SDOT/TransitProgram/RapidRide/Roosevelt/6_Yale%20Ave%20N%20and%20Aloha%20St.pdf they are basically widening the road there.
Rapidride I has a lot of roadway widening. To be fair I guess this is closer to the original rapidride E. https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/04/28/metro-reveals-plans-for-rapidride-i-stations/ (I can’t find an actual cost breakdown of the rapidride I project)
Rapidride R has the sidewalk and electric items added on. It’s projected to cost like 90 million. But if one only did the BAT lanes and stations it’d only cost 27 million.
“Rapidride H had a total street reconstruction along delridge.”
They may have reconstructed the street, but the the net result is not much more transit-priority lanes, just a few blocks scattered here and there. That’s what I meant by the H is not much different from the B, C, D, E (in Seattle), and J. The A and the E (in Shoreline) have more continuous transit-priority lanes, so it’s more of an upgrade there, and more like what other countries do when they upgrade routes.
@Mike
what I’m talking/focusing about is how the cost increased so drastically. To be fair rapidride e also had reconstruction in shoreline
So we need to get King County to make a 2024 presidential-election levy more flexible, so that it can be used for a less RapidRide-oriented approach than the current Metro Connects it has been promoting to the cities. There’s only a few months to get the county on board and draw up a ballot measure, if it’s going to happen this year. Otherwise the next high-turnout, most pro-transit election won’t be until 2028.
If it’s in 2024 it will have to compete with the six anti-tax and right-wing initiatives on the ballot, but that can’t be helped, and the next good opportunity after that is 2028.
> The dirty secret of RapidRide 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.
I doubt that without rapidride’s we’d implement more bus lanes? Perhaps in Seattle, but in general for most cities I really doubt that. Many other eastside/south king cities have their own transit plans calling for bus lanes but they rarely implement them.
I guess let me clarify a bit, I definitely agree with Fesler that we should implement faster slimmer Rapidrides. However, I don’t think one just easily translate that to say not skipping implementing bus stations means one gets higher frequency as Dan Ryan noted.
Secondly I doubt the idea that federal grants mean less bus lanes “Those fights often lead to local jurisdictions jettisoning bus lanes and queue jumps, anyway, which are a key feature”. Usually it’s the other way around with if one wants to accept federal grants one is bound to build them.
Focusing on Fesler’s statement about rapidrides costing too much, Seattle probably over the next decade to 2035 is only planning on like 3 new rapidrides. Rapidride J, R and maybe the 36+49. And the former two were supposed to be funded by the original levy.
We should definitely expand instead the transit plus program to a lot more routes. For instance routes 5, 60, 62, 45
It’s happening right now in the 40 corridor. Seattle is willing to use city funds and vote levies to accelerate transit improvements. The suburbs mostly just draw up transit master plans and wait for Metro or a countywide levy to fund them, and if that doesn’t happen, they just do without, and passengers in those cities suffer. Still, the thrust of this article is what Metro does with its resources and whether the county follows up on that levy it’s been talking about for eight years, not what other cities do in addition to that.
We need to figure out a way to get the entities (City, County, State, Utilities) that are responsible for, but ignoring, their maintenance to pony up for their share of these projects.
Sure, when we are tearing up the street, we should replace the 50 year old pipes, improve the sidewalks, and resurface the road. What we shouldn’t do is spend scarce transit dollars doing it.
This would have the added bonus of having less money to spend building new roads and widening new highways and stroads. Save the planet and get good shit built. Win win.
Isn’t it great that The Urbanist finally has a Comments section?
Until our favorite Mercer Island Dunning-Kruger sufferer finds it.
Cam, he’s saying STB has become the de facto comment section for the Urbanist. Funny and clever!
Ohhh… Ha ha.
They actually were talking about bringing back their comments section, and I thought I’d missed the launch.
Yep, that’s why I read the Urbanist headline then hop straight over here where there is a greater acceptance of debate and conversation. I agree with the Urbanist on like 90% but I wish the Urbanist respected their readers more and valued open conversation and opinions that disagreed.
+1
“Kent needs a fast connection to Link (the KDM-Kent-132nd-GRCC line). 320th in Federal Way and Auburn needs a good east-west Link feeder. ”
Both of these corridors have considerable elevation changes which means they cannot be served by a straight road but climb up gradually.
Fesler assumes Seattle can hire more staff and build more OMFs for more buses. Any of those will take time. How about building a gondola line instead? A gondola line can go straight up the hills, provide high frequency, can get federal funds, won’t get delayed with utility work and road improvements, won’t get in the way of any PBL, won’t need new drivers and comes with a built-in OMF.
Instead of taking a lane for buses, you can take a lane for PBL.
Will each gondola line need its own base for storage and maintenance, or will all the gondolas be connected to each other and able to share their a single base?
We saw with the monorail, with various high speed ferry plans, with the light rail, with the waterfront tunnel, and even with a hotel/restaurant tax that built our baseball stadium – people just want to disagree for almost no reason. The long delays or dissolution of civic plans that would benefit us, or already are in this case, has become a Seattle tradition. Let it be. Add something else. Don’t remove something that works.
We do need to definitely be faster at implementing them though.
I mean like
> Metro Launches the H Line, its First RapidRide Line in Nine Years
The pace is too slow versus the original ones.
https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/03/17/metro-launches-the-h-line-its-first-rapidride-line-in-nine-years/
Given you listed a mix of ideas that are terrible (public funded sports stadiums for multi-billon dollar privately owned teams; high cost ferries running parallel to lower cost bus or train routes) or good ideas but difficult to execute in their particulars (monorail, light rail), perhaps Seattle should be better at killing off bad ideas.
@Tim/others
Perhaps it might be better to focus the discussion on how to improve the rest of the routes and whether they need large capital improvements like what rapidride can provide. Normally king county can only build around 5 or so rapidrides per decade. So let’s say can we improve 10 routes instead lol with something slimmer; or is it better to stick with the normal rapidride.
Checking the top routes by ridership (that didn’t just receive transit plus/rapidride) it’s from highest to lower:
36, 62, 160, 60, 106, 3/4, 150, 5, 2, 45, 128…
Both routes 36 and 60 in south/west seattle there’s potential for just reallocating parking/outer lane to bat lanes I don’t think anything expensive is needed. Route 106, SDOT has talked about bike lanes on mlk so I don’t think it’s in consideration for BAT lanes/other improvements especially with link on the same corridor.
North Seattle the 5 and 62, it’s about whether they want to reallocate parking for BAT lanes aka stone way, greenwood ave…. I guess if they wanted protected bike lanes like on eastlake it might be some expensive rebuilding as well. For 3/4 on james street besides rerouting to yesler, im not even sure what one could do on james street. a bat lane probably wouldn’t even be that useful considering the number of cars entering the lane anyways onto the freeway. Or more accurately extra capital dollars cannot expand the road there. I guess on 5th avenue N one could do some fancy street reconstruction.
south king area, route 150 to southcenter is on the freeway. For S interurban Ave, I doubt tukwila wants to rebuild it. Perhaps some queue jumps if it requires intersection expansion would cost a lot. route 128, I don’t really seem them (tukwila, seatac) spending money on road expansion for their busses. Considering it’s currently a 20 minute frequency bus, would probably first just increase frequency to at least 15 minutes. (Route 160) Rapidride I a lot of the cost is from the road expansions for BAT lanes, so if we can’t reallocate a general lane, then it’ll need to be a large capital road expansion project.
For off board payment besides the top three of 36, 62, 160 it doesn’t seem as necessary, compared to just adding back door orca tap?
For rapidride K, does anyone know what exactly they are spending the 90 million dollars on? I couldn’t find a detailed document besides the alignment outlining what exactly the improvements were.
“36, 62, 160, 60, 106, 3/4, 150, 5, 2, 45, 128”
36: Part of the 49-Broadway-36 RapidRide in Metro Connects, now a candidate RapidRide, and in the Move Seattle 2024 street project list.
62: Was RapidRide in Metro Connects and I think Move Seattle. Downgraded due to budget limitations. Not moved to Latona yet because that street needs reinforcement for more heavy buses.
160: Created to prefigure Rapidride I, which starts construction this year.
60: Part of the 49-Broadway-36 RapidRide corridor. The east-west part of the 60 and the northern terminus have gone through multiple evolutions, but not RapidRide.
106: In Metro Connects as a Renton-Rainier Beach RapidRide. The northern part is rerouted to Boren/SLU but I don’t think RapidRide.
5: No change I’m aware of. The C/D or E restructure was going to move it to Dexter to replace another route but there was opposition.
2: Metro Connect splits it to a Pine-12th-Union route, and a Queen Anne coverage route that would use the new Harrison path to E Aloha Street. That’s not being done in the G restructure. The 2 gets the biggest opposition of any route changes at hearings that I can see. Proposed for ultra-frequent service, not RapidRide.
45: I don’t think it was proposed for RapidRide. When the 45/48 was split Metro assumed the 48 would have higher ridership and be the RapidRide candidate, but instead ridership is higher on the 45, probably because it runs on the Ave to 65th through the entire U-District.
128: Part of a Metro Connects RapidRide north-south concept to replace the C after West Seattle Link, to Burien (not TIB). Since then the concepts have been changing, but there’s general agreement north-south transit in the California corridor needs to be improved.
Thanks for looking into them.
I think for say 5, 45, 2, 3/4 we could probably get by with simpler transit plus initiatives.
> 36: Part of the 49-Broadway-36 RapidRide in Metro Connects, now a candidate RapidRide, and in the Move Seattle 2024 street project list.
Yeah I know it’s part of a rapidride candidate, but even for that one a lot of the proposed changes don’t require large capital expenditures but just relatively simple parking/lane redrawings. I guess it does get costly if trying to have both protected bike lanes bat lanes and a general lane at the beacon ave then that might require reconstruction at the intersections. Maybe ill try writing an article on if it’s even possible to fit both bike and bus lanes.
> 128: Part of a Metro Connects RapidRide north-south concept to replace the C after West Seattle Link, to Burien (not TIB). Since then the concepts have been changing, but there’s general agreement north-south transit in the California corridor needs to be improved.
I was mostly focusing on whether rapidride would be a good fit for it versus other items. And honestly for this one id just focus on adding frequency rather than a large capital program.
> 62: Was RapidRide in Metro Connects and I think Move Seattle. Downgraded due to budget limitations. Not moved to Latona yet because that street needs reinforcement for more heavy buses.
No 62 was not in move seattle. Actually it wasn’t even labeled as a “priority bus” corridor in the original transit plan. https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/SDOT/TransitProgram/TMP2016CH3.pdf#page=7
For metro connects its not in the 2025/interim plan but in the 2040 one. Based on ridership it should be prioritized higher, but it’s (guessing) seen as too close to rapidride E so other corridors are prioritized first.
I guess if using latona is much faster and needs reinforcement then it could use the rapidride capital dollars. for the rest of it on dexter they’ve already added protected bike lanes so I don’t really see where one could really add bat lanes. It still is
I’d focus on what you want. I was just giving the background, the factors that may still have some weight with various parties.
Beacon-12th street improvements are the SDOT project, so that will take care of that, if the project is selected in the future levy. I think SDOT has already started studying what the corridor needs; you can contact them to see where they’re at on it.
I agree that the 62 and 128 seem low priority for RapidRide compared to other corridors. The 62 is an odd route: north on Dexter but east on 65th. It has a lot of promise but is still strange. Metro has been putting a lot of resources into it from the beginning to create a new corridor (like the 31/32 were in the 2000s). It has been full-time frequent ever since it was created in 2016. It serves a lot of overlapping trip pairs, between Sand Point, Roosevelt, Greenlake, Fremont, and SLU, along with being a downtown route. THE 62 IS THE #1 OR 2 LEAST-RELIABLE ROUTE IN THE SYSTEM, SO IT NEEDS THE MOST SERVICE HOURS TO GET BACK TO SCHEDULE. I don’t think proximity to the E has anything to do with it; it’s just a weird route, with some aspects that seem high priority, and other aspects that seem low priority.
Route 49-36 will not survive a public process; the rider connection between Beacon Hill and CID is too strong. Perhaps routes 49-9 could be attempted.
Route 62. The SDOT pavement issue is not on Latona Avenue NE; it has had routes 26 and 20 since 1940; the issue maybe NE 56th Street between Latona Avenue NE and Kirkwood Place North; it once had the Meridian Streetcar line. Of course, SDOT has pavement management needs all along Route 62; see North 35th Street, Stone Way North, North 45th Street, Meridian Avenue North, and North 55th Street.
Route 5: it should be a candidate to extend to Lake City and serve the NE 130th Street Link station.
Route 45 performed much better than Route 48 after the March 2016 split. Route 48 deals with the Montlake congestion and misses the Capitol Hill station. Route 43 is needed. The Murray-Kubly SDOT dropped the electrification project.
@eddiew
> Route 49-36 will not survive a public process; the rider connection between Beacon Hill and CID is too strong.
It’s definitely one of the more ambitious suggest rerouting by metro. I think it’s a bit more possible than it might seem. the new direct connection to UW, first hill, and capitol hill are quite decent draws.
> Perhaps routes 49-9 could be attempted.
49 can’t really be paired with any other route. Only route 36 is a trolleybus one that makes sense. Route 9 duplicates route 7 too much for it to really make any sense. Plus it can’t reach rainier beach station without electrification as well. If route 60 was a trolley bus a combination of 49+60 it might make some sense but it’s not.
> Route 5: it should be a candidate to extend to Lake City and serve the NE 130th Street Link station.
I thought the plan was to modify the 75 to head to NE 130th link station?
@mike
> the 62 is an odd route: north on Dexter but east on 65th. It has a lot of promise but is still strange…. least reliable so it needs more service hours
I don’t think just adding service hours will help it much. if it wants to be reliable basically needs to add some BAT lanes. It currently has zero. (To clarify a separate project. I think tying it together with the route 40 improvements would ended up with no bat lanes for either route)
> Beacon-12th street improvements are the SDOT project, so that will take care of that, if the project is selected in the future levy. I think SDOT has already started studying what the corridor needs; you can contact them to see where they’re at on it.
Sorry to clarify I was talking about the next phase on beacon ave south of Spokane Street. (jefferson park).
SDOT is planning on extending the protected bike lanes but King County Metro has a separate plan about adding bus lanes. The two plans multiple alternatives are not completely compatible with each other though they are trying to keep options for both.
WL: In this context, networks can be revised. Before June 2005, Route 9 was an electric trolleybus line between the U District and South Rose Street via Capitol Hill. It overlapped with Route 7 between the U District and Capitol Hill. Route 7 was split; the north part was relabeled Route 49; Route 9 became a diesel express overlay. Route 9 was reduced in fall 2016 and again after Covid. In this context, Route 9.49 could connect the U District and Rainier Beach Link stations via Capitol Hill, Judkins, and Mt. Baker. With five Link stations, Link could cover the radial market. The R Line capital could speed routes 9, 14, and 36; look ma, no Route 7.
@eddiew
Breaking the 7 connection to downtown will be much harder than the 36s.
> With five Link stations, Link could cover the radial market
Link is on mlk not rainier avenue.
> The R Line capital could speed routes 9, 14, and 36; look ma, no Route 7.
It’d be much worse for most in rainier valley. I’m not sure why you’d think it’d be politically easier to change the 7 versus the 36.
“Breaking the 7 connection to downtown will be much harder than the 36s.”
Even just breaking the Rainier-Jackson connection, or south Rainier to north Rainier. There’s a continuous swath of similar demographics, family ties, shopping patterns, and church attendance between Renton, Skyway, Rainier/MLK, and Jackson, with a lot of overlapping trips. It’s easiest to split that at Rainier Beach than at Mt Baker or at 12th & Jackson. If only one route can serve it, it should be the 7. If two routes, the 7 and 36.
There’s also a case for Broadway-Beacon and Broadway-Rainier routes, again because of travel patterns. Broadway is where people shop for things and services not available in the valley, and where they work at medical establishments. Metro has long supported the 60 overlapping with the 36. The 9-local or 9-express is also a viable concept for Rainier, overlapping the 7. It can terminate short of Rainier Beach if necessary, as it did before at Rose Street.
The real reason the 9 was reduced and the 7X deleted I think, is not because of overlap with the 7, but because they’d compete with the brand-new Link. Metro was trying to get riders to use Link, not fall back to parallel express buses. There’s some logic to that, but it’s also problematic, because of the distance between Rainier and MLK the further south you go. So there are arguments both for and against a Broadway-Rainier route on top of the 7.
Anybody know what the “maintenance activity” was today that messed up link between stadium an Othello? Sometimes being signed up for the alerts is just plain depressing…
I don’t know but I got caught in it. Capitol Hill northbound was “16, 26, 36 minutes” for longer than 16 minutes. An announcement said trains were running every 15 minutes and there was a bridge bus between SODO and Othello due to a technical issue.
The display finally started counting down to something like “10, 26, 36 minutes”. The train arrived at the 5 minute mark, so earlier than the display said.
Just a little perspective on how long transit lines take to get built:
The five RapidRide lines approved by voters in 2000 were open by early 2014.
ST1 passed in 1996, and its capital improvements projects were complete in 2021.
ST2 passed in 2008, and will hopefully be complete in 2026.
The antis will claim ST2 was promised to be finished the previous year, so ST should not have been trusted with more money, and the projects should not have been built.
Is the comment section flip-flopping again? When I pointed out that many local transit projects take longer to build than the moon shot (1962 to 1969), the comment defended the slowness saying NASA has a lot more money. Now the comment section is complaining about how long local transit projects take to build?!?
I haven’t heard from the antis in awhile. Ross is not an anti who concern trolls over how long things take. He just says forthrightly what he thinks is worth building and what is not.
You, Sam, seem to be the Benjamin Franklin of stating an opinion.
Brent: the 2000 Metro sales tax was a reaction to the I-695 fallout. The 2006 sales tax increase, Transit Now, funded the first five RR lines. It was supplemented by another tax increase in about 2010 during the recession; that added the F Line to stay true to 40/40/20 on new hours.
Eddiew may recall the importance of decent leadership at KCM.
The 2006 Transit Now Sales Tax increase was spearheaded by an ambitious new GM (Kevin Desmond) who wondered why ST was doing all the building while Metro was resting on its laurels.
He managed to get political support behind the scenes, had his staff work up the project under confidentiality, and roll it out with political support from day one.
Imagine having a GM who could do that much these days…
You know what might sell a county transit bond issue to voters who are not frequent transit riders?
Faster rollout of bus electrification. Nearly everyone understands the need to wipe out Metro’s carbon footprint, as quickly as practicable, and to do so in a manner less fake than purchasing carbon indulgences.
Of course, there is an open question whether the county’s sales of carbon indulgences offsets the good of electrifying our transportation system.
I would vote against that
As would I. A more rapid roll out of trolley wire would be impactful, but for BEBs there is no reason to replace faster than current lifecycle replacement … and for express buses (like ST’s double deck’s), it’s not clear that 100% battery buses are better than the environment than diesel bus once you include thinks like mfg footprint and higher tire pollution.
Investing in spot improvements would be a much better win-win. Buses that avoid congestion consume less energy, electrified or otherwise.
BEB is a relatively new technology. Agencies are having range issues with articulated buses. Many Seattle routes may be better off with electric trolleybus. SDOT, Metro, and the FTA could partner on a smart expansion. The ETB extent was greater between 1940 and 1963.
The electric trolley wires are pretty expensive to install as well. I mean it’s the main reason why rapidride J doesn’t reach northgate and was cut twice first to roosevelt and then just to u district
WL –
Trolleybus overhead and other infrastructure is eligible for fixed guideway grants from the FTA. It is cost competitive when KCM applies for that money.
@K H
> Trolleybus overhead and other infrastructure is eligible for fixed guideway grants from the FTA. It is cost competitive when KCM applies for that money.
If that is actually true, how do you reconcile that with how rapidride J was truncated twice? Secondly other bus improvements such as transit signal priority, or even expensive road expansions for bat lanes (of course better if can just reallocate from parking) are eligible for those grants too.
Look electrification is not ‘bad’ by itself, but adding all these other items outside of actually increasing the reliability/frequency of transit is exactly why the Rapidride projects have gotten so expensive and hard to implement.
WL: KH is correct. The twists and turns of Roosevelt BRT -> Jay Line has more to do with SDOT and network design. The McGinn SDOT fancied a streetcar; the Murray SDOT shifted to ETB; both were mistaken in not appreciating the network power of Link. SDOT did not have the fiscal or management chops to reach Northgate or Roosevelt. The Roosevelt couplet should not have a heavy transit emphasis; riders are better off with very frequent service on University Way NE, a two-way arterial serving the heart of the traditional U District. The Roosevelt couplet has a long transfer walk from the U District Link station. Each afternoon, Roosevelt carries spillover traffic from the I-5 general purpose lanes. (When will network wide tolling be implemented?). Though Link was delayed, the Roosevelt project was even slower. How does a longer J Line complement Link? Enough to make it worth its cost over other alternative network improvements? The SDOT PBL on Roosevelt slowed transit flow; it took a lane; the bus islands can only handle one bus at a time. The SDOT designs seem to have killed the notion of through routing Route 70 with a short Route 7 to Mt. Baker only; that was in the Metro Connects network before it became the official one that adopted all seven of the SDOT RR lines and all the ST3 projects. Branding becomes a constraint on the network.
> WL: KH is correct. The twists and turns of Roosevelt BRT -> Jay Line has more to do with SDOT and network design. The McGinn SDOT fancied a streetcar; the Murray SDOT shifted to ETB; both were mistaken in not appreciating the network power of Link. SDOT did not have the fiscal or management chops to reach Northgate or Roosevelt.
Well they ran out of money because of the cost of electrification from U District to Roosevelt… That section didn’t require rebuilding the street, they were just adding protected bike lanes with posts.
If route 70 wasn’t a trolley bus route they could have easily extended it up north.
> The Roosevelt couplet should not have a heavy transit emphasis; riders are better off with very frequent service on University Way NE….
We can debate that separately what alignment it should take; my main point here is that electrification is quite expensive.
“Trolleybus overhead and other infrastructure is eligible for fixed guideway grants from the FTA. It is cost competitive when KCM applies for that money.”
“If that is actually true,”
Yes, it’s been brought up several times before, and Metro might have mentioned it in the hearings on the trolley network in the mid 2010s. At the time the trolley fleet needed to be replaced, and the question was whether to keep the trolley network, shut it down, or expand it. The decision was to keep it. With minor additions like filling in the gap for the 48, rerouting it a few blocks to Link stations, and rerouting the 3/4 to Yesler (which has since been withdrawn). Trolley routes cost more than diesel routes, but the fixed-guideway grant makes up the difference.
WL: note the extra costs required by the SDOT alignment in the U District. NE 43rd Street will need new pavement and a signal at Roosevelt Way NE; new ETB overhead will be installed on the couplet. Extra cost will be imposed on northbound riders; the last stop will be on NE 43rd Street nearside 12th Avenue NE, so riders will walk one block uphill to Link, two blocks to University Way NE, and three blocks to NE Campus Parkway. The Route 70 pathway provides better connection with NE Campus Parkway, the Ave, 15th Avenue NE, and the UW campus.
> WL: note the extra costs required by the SDOT alignment in the U District. NE 43rd Street will need new pavement and a signal at Roosevelt Way NE; new ETB overhead will be installed on the couplet. Extra cost will be imposed on northbound riders; the last stop will be on NE 43rd Street nearside 12th Avenue NE, so riders will walk one block uphill to Link, two blocks to University Way NE, and three blocks to NE Campus Parkway. The Route 70 pathway provides better connection with NE Campus Parkway, the Ave, 15th Avenue NE, and the UW campus.
We can change the alignment to whatever you prefer for this discussion. My main point is that electrification is expensive.
We can change the alignment to whatever you prefer for this discussion. My main point is that electrification is expensive.
Yes, but it is just one piece of it. In the short run, the current route of the 70 is better. In the long run, I believe it is better* to continue on the Roosevelt couplet until somewhere north of 65th (e. g. 68th). So in the short run keep it the same, but in the long run change it. So why then did they spend the money to move the wire?
Because it is RapdRide. With RapidRide you want special bus stops called “Stations”. SDOT didn’t want to put these on the current pathway of the 70 only to abandon them a few years later when the route is extended. So they decided to basically go on Roosevelt as far as possible and then cut over. A northbound bus will turn on 43rd and then serve a stop between 11th and 12th. But it will be an ordinary bus stop (nothing fancy) because that is the last stop on the line (no one is expected to board there). The bus then lays over and loops around. In doing so it serves existing fancy stops on 45th and 43rd before turning left and going on Roosevelt. Thus the only stations they need to build are those that is meant to be permanent. In the short run it means moving some wire, while in the long run it means retaining most of it.
*I think the ideal routing is to continue on Roosevelt until past 65th. That way the connection to Link is at Roosevelt not U-District station. For riders coming from the north, this is basically the same. For riders coming from the south this would be a detour, but very few would actually do that (since you are essentially reversing directions). There are some advantages to taking this approach:
1) It connects to more buses (e. g. the 62).
2) It makes a more direct connection to the 44 for trips to the west. This is a straightforward connection (e. g. Eastlake to Wallingford) and the alternatives require going the wrong direction (e. g. south towards downtown and then back north again). Yet the transfer now is awkward, as the 70 goes veers east at the last second (https://maps.app.goo.gl/2DWZYqDNRGSFKjG78).
3) It avoids making turns until the very end of the route (when it is no longer carrying riders). The more a bus just keeps going straight the more value it adds and the cheaper it is to operate.
4) It complements the U-District Station by providing more coverage in the area. For example, consider The University Plaza (the condominium tower). It is about an 8 minute walk to Link. It is about about a 1 minute walk to the bus stop (https://maps.app.goo.gl/TegwE27jLGQGioJa9). Now imagine is someone there is trying to get to the north end of downtown. https://maps.app.goo.gl/JeNvVwNKgKf8vKGS7. The fastest option is to take Link, but that requires long walks on either end. You can cut down the walking by taking buses that feed Link but they become awkward. A bus that simply continued that direction would solve that problem. Twenty years ago such a bus would be hard to justify. But with growth along Roosevelt (and surrounding streets) things have changed.
5) It allows buses from the north to use a common pathway (Roosevelt/Ravenna/University Way) between the Roosevelt and the U-District. We could do this now, but that would leave a bit of a coverage gap to the west. The combination of several regular buses running along a spine and the very frequent J running along Roosevelt would be an ideal combination.
But again, that is all long term. If the bus doesn’t make it past 45th (and the J won’t) then it should follow the existing route of the 70. It won’t because it is RapidRide, and this is just a stage.
“Nearly everyone understands the need to wipe out Metro’s carbon footprint, as quickly as practicable”
No, I don’t. A diesel bus has a much lower carbon footprint than all the passengers with cars driving them. Instead of dedicating a huge chunk of money to replace the entire bus fleet now, we should keep running the diesel buses until their end of life and then replace them with electric buses one by one, and use the chunk of money to increase frequency and service in the meantime. That would attract more people from their cars and create a more transit-oriented population, and that would decrease emissions more than electrifying the bus fleet now would.
Europe has already started rapidly electrifying their bus fleet. But, they have the luxury of being able to buy cheap battery buses from China for cheap, something that U.S. trade policy does not allow, which makes battery buses far more expensive here than there. Also, battery buses is not just buying the buses, it’s also installing all the charging infrastructure; turns out that charging hundreds of buses at the same place all at once requires huge infrastructure upgrades.
That’s not to say it shouldn’t eventually be done, but as the technology matures, the cost of doing it 10 years from now is likely to be substantially less than the cost of doing it today. It is also uneconomical to throw away perfectly good buses Metro already has that have years of life left in them, purely for the sake of electrification.
If some other state agency that is primarily focused on carbon reduction is willing to offer King County Metro grant money to electrify some of its buses sooner than it otherwise would, for the sake of helping to move the technology along and incentivize companies to make battery buses, of course they should accept it. But, if it’s Metro’s own money, maximizing mobility for its passengers should always trump decarbonization goals.
Mike Orr: nice point. It was debated. If transit attracts riders, it helps the climate issue. BEB, ETB, and hybrid buses all have batteries, capital costs, and operating costs. The lifecycle costs can be compared. Metro has committed to BEB over hybrid. The industry is having issues with the range and therefore the operating cost of articulated BEB. That is not an issue with ETB. That seems an opportunity for SDOT and the FTA to step in and help with the Seattle routes needing articulated coaches.
History repeats debates. Recall the Executive Locke move against CNG buses. He shifted that capital cost along with shifting sales tax to service from capital to trigger the several restructures at Metro in the late 1990s. That was clean air and capital against service hours. That debate was repeated and BEB was chosen.
“The electric trolley wires are pretty expensive to install as well. I mean it’s the main reason why rapidride J doesn’t reach northgate and was cut twice first to roosevelt and then just to u district”
It’s a problem but not an insurmountable one. Seattle used to have most of its bus routes on trolley wire, and before that streetcars. It’s just a matter of priorities and what to invest in. Wired buses are more efficient because you’re not transporting large heavy batteries, and not polluting the environment with battery-component chemicals, or losing energy due to battery inefficiency. We don’t have to wire all Metro routes, just the more strategic and higher-volume ones. Like the corridors Metro has already designated for RapidRide and Frequent routes. Or even just some of them. That’s what other countries are doing.
And we can also focus on Seattle routes, where some streets are already wired, and where new routes can most share existing wire for part of the route. For instance, most of the 48 was wired for the 7 and 43; there’s just a one-mile gap between them that the 48 needs.
Metro proposed to wire Yesler between 3rd and 8th to get the 3/4 out of congestion. It was ultimately withdrawn due to concerns about not serving the jail, but the jail can be addressed with a different coverage route, not the workhorse 3/4.
Converting the E would be the longest stretch of new wire, but also one of the most productive. We don’t need to rush to wire RapidRide I (Renton-Kent-Auburn); there are lower-hanging fruit.
What I don’t know is how fast a trolleybus can go without falling off the wire. Could they run across the West Seattle Bridge or on freeways? Would a 270 trolleybus be possible? Or would it be in too much danger of falling off the wire on the bridge and suddenly stopping and cars crashing into it?
Trolleybus overhead and the infrastructure is available for fixed guideway money from the FTA, keeping it cost competitive.
Regarding trolleybus speed, the limitation is usually the rear differential gearing. Lower gearing for better hill climbing limits the top speed, currently in the low 40mphs for the current fleet.
Of Seattle’s original 1940 fleet, the Brill coaches came with higher rear differential gearing, allowing them to operate at higher speeds across the Aurora Bridge but they weren’t great at operating on the hillier routes especially with a full load.
With modern safety standards, a dewirement somewhere like the Aurora Bridge could be pretty hazardous for an operator that has to put their poles back up, but battery back-up could mitigate that.
“Europe has already started rapidly electrifying their bus fleet. But, they have the luxury of being able to buy cheap battery buses from China for cheap, something that U.S. trade policy does not allow” –asdf2, above.
Some cities are adding trolleybus routes I think. But Europe also has something else. The current network they’re starting from has the frequency and coverage we need. So if they just replace the buses 1:1, it’s still good. Whereas we need that money to raise service to that level.
Just read that Sound Transit recently ordered some electric buses(*) (targeted delivery 2027-2028) which use wireless charging as an alternative to trolley wire. Not sure how the cost of the two technologies compare, but wireless charging does offer some intriguing advantages over trolley wire. For example, wireless charging avoids the awkwardness of overhead wire and support structures, as well as big poles sticking out of the buses, while also allowing buses to seamless switch between electrified and non-electrified sections of a route, without delays to passengers.
The article doesn’t go into details, but it seams to indicate a plan to locate the chargers at bus stops, which is much more cost-effective than planting them along the entire route, and offers the nice property where a few wireless chargers at highly used bus stops in places like downtown or the U-district could potentially serve a large number of buses.
(*) https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/sound-transit-electric-buses-wirelessly-charged/281-7b860a66-e220-49ea-a0ef-b8fb8ed644b8
The article also has a link to a YouTube video illustrate that apparently the Amtrak Cascades bus that connects Seattle to Bellingham between train trips is already electrified. That is done with a battery bus which has enough range to go from Seattle to Bellingham and back on one charge, so only needs chargers in one place (Seattle), and since this bus route runs only once per day, a slow overnight charge in Seattle is good enough, no need for expensive fast charging.
As of October, Amtrak’s thruway bus (actually operated by MTR Western) was still diesel.
@asdf2
It’s for the stride 1 and 2 as there’s relatively fewer stations with just the freeway stations so it’s much easier to start with it. Also I think it’s the only double decker electric buy America compliant one.
There’s other plans to slowly convert the rest of the fleet to battery electric buses
> We are excited to once again be working with our long-standing customer Sound Transit in the Puget Sound region who have selected our Enviro500EV with next-generation technology for their new Stride bus rapid transit service.
> “This award highlights the resurging demand for Alexander Dennis’ double deck buses in North America following the relaunch of Buy America compliant production with Big Rig Manufacturing. The order was placed after we completed extensive route mapping exercises in conjunction with Sound Transit, using automotive-grade modelling to fully understand the operational requirements.
https://bus-news.com/sound-transit-orders-33-enviro500ev-electric-buses-for-seattle/
> The article doesn’t go into details, but it seams to indicate a plan to locate the chargers at bus stops
King county metros plans are here they planning on slowly replacing the fleet with battery electric (200 or so) and just 30 more electric trolley ones. I think the urbanist has an article on this somewhere or if not I can write a short summary in a comment next open thread if you’re interested
https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/metro/programs-and-projects/zero-emissions-fleet
In general electrification by itself is already an expensive goal but maybe achievable for some routes.
But as asdf2 noted: “Europe has already started rapidly electrifying their bus fleet. But, they have the luxury of being able to buy cheap battery buses from China for cheap, something that U.S. trade policy does not allow, which makes battery buses far more expensive here than there”
I mean look at this recent article for Milwaukee (2023)
> The Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) began operating its first BEBs along the new bus rapid transit service, Connect 1, in June. Those buses were made by the Canadian manufacturer Nova Bus. Earlier this year, Nova Bus exited the U.S. market. And the county has already had to replace the batteries due to a manufacturing issue.
>… BEBs cost, on average, two to three times as much as a diesel bus. The model the county has can run 247 miles on a single charge, but a charger is included at the western end of the Connect 1 route.
https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2023/11/07/transportation-is-it-the-end-of-battery-electric-buses-for-milwaukee/
The buy america provisions aka a jobs program makes electric busses incredibly expensive.
We can’t keep using transit dollars for a bunch of side missions and goals. On top of sidewalks, bike lanes, rebuilding asphalt for cars, and environment with electrification, there’s also the goal of industrial jobs with buy america.