Metro Kicks Off South Link Connections

29 Replies to “Metro Kicks Off South Link Connections”

1. I never travel this far into South King County, so I can’t personally weigh in on details. However I’ve always been wondering why this area of about 400,000 residents has such weak east-west service that could connect to Link. That’s especially true between I-5 and SR 167. There are major retail destinations like Fred Meyer on 99, Walmart in South Federal Way, the Outlet Collection area and Muckleshoot that would seem to warrant great bus service.

   1. There were 850,000 people in South King County in the 2010s. I.e., the same as San Francisco, higher than Seattle, and higher than Snohomish County at the time.

      Metro’s legacy in the 80s was long milk runs and peak expresses to downtown Seattle. The 131/132 to Highline CC. The 174 to and Federal Way. The 150 to southeast Auburn. The 142 to Renton (and maybe the Renton Highlands?),. The 240 from Clyde Hill to Bellevue, Renton, Sea-Tac, and Burien. The 340 express from Shoreline P&R to Bothell, Bellevue, Renton, Sea-Tac, and Burien. I don’t remember if there were any east-west routes south of Grady Way.

      South King County has changed more slowly than Seattle and the Eastside, as the demographics became relatively poorer. There’s been relatively little construction, so its buildings and transit are stuck in the 1970s’s to a large extent. When northwestern Kent evolved into an industrial center in the 1990s, all the new warehouses stuck to the one-story, large-setback model like office parks.

      In the 2010s Metro had several restructures to improve the situation. The ultra-long milk runs to downtown Seattle are gone. Service between South King County cities is more complete and half-hourly instead of hourly. You can see that in Kent and Southcenter, which both have half-hourly routes to all the surrounding cities, and some of them are even 15 minutes weekdays.

      What South King County needs now is what it has always needed: more east-west service, and more service to Link stations (now that those will soon exist). Metro already has concepts for these in Metro Connects. A more frequent and faster KDM-Kent-East Hill-GRCC route. A Federal Way-Auburn-GRCC route.

      Two things are still missing in Metro’s concepts. One, extend RapidRide I north to Rainier Beach Station, to give East Hill and south Renton access to Link. Two, have route(s) from eastern Renton (e.g., the Highlands) to Rainier Beach. Most of Renton’s population lives east of downtown Renton, yet they all have to transfer in downtown Renton to get further. By giving as many routes as possible a one-seat ride to a Link station, that ensures a maximum two-seat ride to many other parts of the region. Otherwise it ends up being a three- or four-seat ride, with transfer waits that are still less than optimal.

   2. However I’ve always been wondering why this area of about 400,000 residents has such weak east-west service that could connect to Link.

      It isn’t just east-west service. When you look at the area on Metro’s map (https://kingcounty.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=3e239c9048604de8a1c73b72679bc82e) it is striking how spread out the routes are. For example start at Angle Lake and then go east past I-5 and past SR 167. You have two north-south buses. The 153 runs on 84th (East Valley Highway). The 160 runs on 108th. There is over a mile between them. Then there is nothing to the east of there until you get to SR 169 which is over six miles away! You might think that is OK, because it is all forest in between the two bus routes, but look at a satellite view. Miles and miles of housing that is dense enough to add up, but not dense enough to attract much ridership. This is basically the problem. You’ve got a lot of people living in low-density areas. Other than a handful of routes (that go north-south) you basically have coverage buses. If you are covering an area it is cheaper to cover it in one direction (north-south) than two (east-west) especially if the vast majority of riders are heading that way.

      Look again at the map and notice that there is an east-west route: the 906. This is DART, which means that it is subsidized more than most Metro buses; it is a lifeline for those trying to get around. It serves the hospital as well as some of the commercial areas. I suppose you could make the case that it should go to SeaTac, but that means no service at all along that part of Southcenter Parkway. It would also mean that it wouldn’t connect with the F or Sounder. I’m not saying it shouldn’t — I don’t have an opinion on the route — I’m saying that service in general is just very light because density is so low. Metro is basically grasping at straws there.

      There are other issues. Link doesn’t have many stops, and very few are significant destinations. You’ve got SeaTac, but SeaTac is not a top destination (like Downtown Seattle, Downtown Bellevue or the UW). If you just look at it in terms of employment then SeaTac shows up as a hotspot, but there are bunch scattered around the area (Renton, Southcenter, various hospitals, etc.). For the South End, Link’s main value is getting people to downtown, and there are express buses for that.

2. Is Pierce Transit doing any advanced planning to serve the new Federal Way station, or are they expecting that ST Express will be carrying that effort alone? PT already runs Route 407 to FW.

   1. All their routes in the area – the 500, 501, and 402 – already connect to Federal Way.

      The only other route in the area that used to connect there is the peak-only 63, which used to be a peak-hours peak-direction route to Tacoma before getting cancelled this last weekend. If they want to restore it, and could work out the interagency cooperation, it might be useful to combine with the Metro 182 or 187 to run locally from Tacoma to Federal Way Link.

      1. Alas! My presbyopia is aggravating! It is Route 402 (not 407).

         I also assumed that Routes 500 and 501 were ST Express. It’s confusing to me to have them be PT routes.

         Certainly that gives a decent route structure to get to Link. I would only wonder if the frequencies will warrant changes.

      2. The 500 and 501 preceded Sound Transit. The rest of the 500 range was empty in all the agencies so ST took 510-599.

3. Thanks for the article.

   I talked about the south link connections in a previous thread and honestly I couldn’t figure out any moderate better bus routes besides some simple removal of circulators. https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/03/18/open-thread-42/#comment-928928

   The 181 and the 165 will probably continue to be the main bus routes connecting to federal way and high line college (besides rapidride A) of course.

   1. Metro intended to upgrade both the 165 and 181 to RapidRide, but that has now stalled because there still hasn’t been a Metro Connects levy and the cost and delays of RapidRide construction have become more apparent. So as Fesler and I have argued, now is the time for incremental improvements on those routes to get at least some of the benefits of RapidRide. Since Metro is asking us what the area needs, I’d say more full-time frequent transit in the 165 and 181 corridors. Some have also brought up extending a West Seattle route to SeaTac (like the H, but that gets stalled in RapidRide funding so it might have to be another route).

      I don’t know about other things like Kent-Federal Way service, or west Des Moines service, or other Renton corriors, since I’ve never lived there and don’t know as much about the travel patterns.

   2. I agree with your overall assessment, WL. Metro isn’t going to save much when they truncate the buses. Some of the buses already serve the future stations. I don’t see any major changes as a result.

      In contrast this will definitely change Sound Transit’s buses. Truncating them at Federal Way will save a lot of money. On the other hand, it could delay a lot of riders who are used to their express. It seems possible to balance these (as I suggested earlier — https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/02/25/regional-transit-after-federal-way-link/) but Sound Transit may decide to just truncate everything.

4. My dog’s babysitter is in the impacted area, a long route 183. Driving there from my home in Kirkland takes 40 minutes, transit would take over two hours each way.

   Unfortunately, because the land use in South King is so terrible, it is hard to imagine any kind of reasonable service that would fix this. The only way the trip even begins to compete with driving would require a huge per-passenger subsidy targeting my particular trip (e.g. a frequent express from Kirkland TC to Kent Station), which, of course, would be a poor use of resources.

   This is the problem with south King in a nutshell. Any one particular trip in isolation, you can fix by spending disproportionate resources on an express route for that particular trip, but with everybody going to different places, that doesn’t scale, so you end up with a series of milk run routes that either take an hour to go to downtown Seattle (which still requires an additional connection or two to get where you really want to go), or a connection to a slow train that isn’t any better.

   The area is such a mess it almost makes me want to just throw up my hands, tell everybody there to just drive their cars, and focus bus resources on other areas with better land use (e.g. Seattle) where it can be more useful at reasonable cost. The counter argument, of course, is poor people, who have no choice but to spend two hours/day 5 days/week riding buses around to get to their jobs, who can’t afford rent in places with better land use.

   1. https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/metro/routes-and-service/schedules-and-maps/183#route-map

      See Route 183 map. Is it very direct?

      1. I saw the route and thought about straightening it out, but practically speaking nothing else made sense besides the current route.

         The future will have star lake station there so star lake to kent (north segment) should just continue as is.

         The southern segment star lake via camelot to federal way, I can’t think of anything else that makes sense. skipping camelot just turns this bus into copying Rapidride A down aurora.

      2. Reith Road used to be on the predecessor of the 165 (Kent-KDM), where it was an out-of-the-way detour on a major corridor, so the situation is better now. (Even though it raises the question of how to get from Reith Road to KDM. But Reith Road is all single-family is it’s not many people. And in the future, with Redondo Link station, that will give them access to the region.)

         Perhaps Camelot should be on a separate route. Where could it usefully go. I’ve never been to Camelot and don’t know what’s there. I’ve often thought a route going east would be helpful, to bring transit to more areas.

         Of course, Metro doesn’t have money for an expansion, so any restructure would have to be revenue neutral. Except to the extent that the improving economy and easing driver shortage yields marginally more service hours.

   2. An express from Kirkland TC to Kent Station is unrealistic. But Downtown Bellevue to Kent Station is not. That would mean a three-seat ride: Kirkland to Bellevue, Bellevue to Kent, and Kent to your final destination. It would probably still take a long time, but might at least be straightforward enough to work for you.

      You are right though — it is one of the big challenges. Downtown Bellevue to Kent Station sounds reasonable because there is some density around Kent Station. But it still isn’t that dense. The folks who could walk to a stop in Kent represent a tiny portion of those who live in Kent. You’ve got some jobs there as well, but again not that many. This means you are even more dependent on buses connecting to Kent Station, and once again those likely represent a small portion of the ridership. There are some ways in which it could be improved, but there is only so much you can do.

5. For the current “main bus routes” in south king, what do y’all think about much farther stop spacing copying what swift does in community transit? Could increase the frequency probably from 30 to around 20ish minutes? Though would have to walk a lot more.

   Granted, though given the lower ridership I’m not sure if consolidating stop spacing would actually speed up the buses that much if there’s already not many boarding.

   156: (30 min) route from south center to highline college. Slight extension from highline college to star lake station.
   165: (30 min) highline college to kent to burien
   181: (15 min to 30 min evenings) federal way to auburn to highline college
   182: (30 min) from Northeast Tacoma to Federal Transit Center;

   (Note some of these bus routes do have partial overlaps that provide higher frequency, like 181 has the 578 running from federal way to auburn as well)

   1. Swift lines have local shadow routes to serve the in-between stops. Metro’s standard now is 1/4 mile stop spacing, which is comparable to Europe. Swift has 1-mile spacing like Link. Link needs local shadows (67, 49, 106, 124, A), and so would any limited-stop routes. That roughly doubles the cost, so you’re not saving any money. What you are doing is giving much better transit options, because Swift is like a “poor man’s light rail”. But it’s not something Metro has money for, or something Metro is inclined to do. It made RapidRide local-stop to avoid the cost of overlays. That’s a tradeoff: it helps some trips but hinders others. Still, it’s the direction Metro has chosen to go, and it would be hard to get it to change its mind.

      Metro does intend to increase all-day express routes, but those generally won’t be frequent, and almost all of them will be solely within the suburbs.

      1. I agree with everything that Mike said. I think there is value in having a stop diet on these (and other routes). But that means you end up with stops every 1/4 mile (not like Swift).

         Stop diets help, and are always a good idea, but they don’t make that much difference. The more often you run the bus, the bigger the impact. Doing the work requires initial capital spending, but in the long run saves you driver time. Given the driver shortage, this might be a good time to do it. But this should be applied to the system as a whole or the routes that run most often.

         Then there is the politics. Stop diets are often controversial. One advantage of a system-wide stop diet is that you can increase the frequency in various neighborhoods. The same is true with changing regions. For example I could see Magnolia going on a stop diet even though you only end up with one bus (the 33) going from running every half hour to every fifteen minutes. If you only change one route than it becomes more difficult to use that savings somewhere else. For one thing the improvement might not be big enough. A ten percent improvement on a bus running four times an hour would mean running buses every 13.5 minutes instead of every 15. Is that even worth it (to give up on clock-face scheduling)? Even if you can produce a solid improvement it may not be the best choice. For example a stop diet on the Metro 7 route might enable us to go from buses every 7.5 minutes to every 6 minutes. Or it could mean a couple routes somewhere else go from every 15 minutes to every half hour. The latter might be a bigger improvement.

      2. > Swift lines have local shadow routes to serve the in-between stops.

         True, but community transit local variant is more like a coverage route, most would just walk.

         For instance on aurora there’s swift blue every 10/15 minutes with 1 mile stop spacing. Then there’s the 101 with local stops but it runs every 30 minutes. Or at least how the older los angeles “rapid” worked they had around the same frequency as the local variants. (For context los angeles “rapid” buses had 1 mile stop spacing and local variants around 0.25, the nextGen routes merged them together for around 0.5 miles stop spacing)

         > That roughly doubles the cost, so you’re not saving any money.

         Definitely wouldn’t run both “rapid” and local variants as these routes are too long and not dense enough to support both. I was more proposing say 0.5 or 0.75 mile station stop spacing with solely one route. The idea being to try reaching 20 minute frequency with the speed up. The problem is that the ridership of say route 181 when I checked is only at 1300 daily riders and route 165 is 2100, I don’t think increasing the stop spacing drastically would really speed up the bus much.

      3. True, but community transit local variant is more like a coverage route, most would just walk.

         I don’t know about that. I seem to remember the 101 having high ridership. Swift was higher, but the 101 was still really high. Get rid of the 101 and you basically throw away one of your more successful routes. Anecdotally I’ve been in position to get somewhere on SR 99 and Google recommended the 101 (because walking would take too long).

         I was more proposing say 0.5 or 0.75 mile station stop spacing with solely one route.

         My guess is if you did that you would throw away a lot of your ridership. So even though the bus would run faster and more often, it would get fewer riders. (It reminds me of the joke: If you get rid of all the stops it will go really fast.)

         I don’t have the ridership numbers for these routes. But consider the RapidRide E. I’ve looked at the stop data there and half mile stop spacing would be a disaster. It just wouldn’t work. Too many trips would require too much walking. There is a reason why 1/4 mile is basically the worldwide standard. It is related to how far people are willing to walk (https://humantransit.org/2010/11/san-francisco-a-rational-stop-spacing-plan.html). Any farther and people won’t walk it. Any shorter and you are wasting time.

         I think people look at Swift and think it is a model for other routes. I feel like the opposite is true. I can think of several other options that quite possibly would do better, including just mimicking RapidRide A and E (which get way more riders, and way more riders per service hour).

      4. Both Swift and the 101 are the highest-ridership routes in CT.

         “I think people look at Swift and think it is a model for other routes.”

         People don’t understand Swift because it’s an uncommon paradigm here. In LA and San Francisco there are three levels: Local routes (stops every 1/4 mile), Rapid/Limited routes (stops every 1/2 to 1 mile), and Express routes (nonstop segments longer than two miles). In New York both the local and express subways and PATH are middle-level (closest stop spacing 1/2 mile), while NJT/LIRR/Metro-North are express, and regular bus routes are local.

         The middle level is Swift, Link (1-2 mile spacing), Stride, some ST Express routes (512, 522, 550), and some current/former Metro express routes (7X, 9X, 15X). They’re scattered among several brand names, some have the same name as a dissimilar service (“express”), some are peak-only so you can’t use them all-day bidirectionally, they were created in different decades, and the agencies have never explained to the public how they’re similar or the middle level. Many people don’t know much about transit and have never been in a city with the middle level, so they don’t realize it’s possible or how it could benefit them. That’s the fault of the agencies/governments for not explaining it, or not understanding it themselves.

         We’re backing into a middle-level “grid” with Link, Stride, and Swift, but the agencies aren’t explaining that to the public in a way they’d understand. In New York people understand the subway is faster than regular buses, regional trains and express buses are even faster but less frequent. Here people are more confused. But if you live in Snohomish County, it’s obvious Swift is faster than regular buses, and you don’t care about the brands in other counties.

         Everybody conflates Swift and RapidRide/Stream because they’re both presented as “BRT” and the difference isn’t explained. Even people who know the difference sometimes forget, and start applying “Swift” or “RapidRide” to the wrong route concepts.

      5. > I think people look at Swift and think it is a model for other routes. I feel like the opposite is true. I can think of several other options that quite possibly would do better, including just mimicking RapidRide A and E (which get way more riders, and way more riders per service hour).

         Normally I’d suggest just doing normal stop space balancing to 0.25/0.3 mile spacing. I proposed more severe stop spacing to try increasing the frequency further since we’re starting from 30 minute headways. But it probably unfortunately wouldn’t even garner that much benefit since with the low ridership many bus stops are probably already being skipped.

         > People don’t understand Swift because it’s an uncommon paradigm here. In LA and San Francisco there are three levels: Local routes (stops every 1/4 mile), Rapid/Limited routes (stops every 1/2 to 1 mile), and Express routes (nonstop segments longer than two miles). In New York both the local and express subways and PATH are middle-level (closest stop spacing 1/2 mile), while NJT/LIRR/Metro-North are express, and regular bus routes are local.

         Swift is pretty unusual in America and even worldwide actually. I can’t think of any other avenue at-grade (there’s some elevated/freeway) bus route that runs 1 mile stop spacing and also runs at ~15 minute frequency that much more frequently than it’s local variant (30 minute 101 route).

         In LA the old local and rapid/limited routes typically ran around the same frequency. Or they had the “rapid” variant usually it was the one that ran less frequently. Like the 704 running every 20 minutes, while the route 4 ran every 15 . And then they merged them to the “nextgen”bus routes that are practically similar frequency and stop spacing as rapidride, like the new route 4 became around 10 minutes.

         SF rapid ones have much more closer stop spacing than a mile aka the 38R is around 0.3 mile stop spacing. The closest examples I can think of are say Richmond Pulse BRT or say San Diego Rapid 215 and even these two have half mile stop spacing.

      6. Swift is pretty unusual in America and even worldwide actually.

         Yeah, that is my understanding as well. I also think that a lot of these combinations are uniquely American. I think most countries settle on 1/4 mile stop spacing and then (at most) complement it with express service (which is often town-to-town or city-to-city). Of course a lot of European cities have good (old) rail systems they can leverage for the latter.

         I think 1/4 bus stop spacing became the standard because it is the sweet spot. It is like smart phones. They are all roughly the same size because people want a big screen but they don’t want to carry around a tablet. Same thing with buses. Agencies realized that stopping every block just takes too long but if you spread out the route than people complain (or just stop taking the bus). I’m not sure why the US has a lot more bus stops. It may be how people treat transit in this country. Basically everything is coverage (except a handful of express buses to work). Thus the time it takes for the average rider to get to their destination isn’t important (if they were in a hurry they would buy a car).

         In turn I think this short stop spacing has lead to more of these odd combinations. Going from 1/4 stop spacing to 1/2 mile doesn’t gain you that much. In contrast going from 1/10 mile to 1/2 mile saves a lot. That may have contributed to it.

         Another is just the nature of our cities. We sprawl. It is quite possible that the Swift approach really is the best approach for that corridor. It is a very long corridor with several mid-level destinations along the way. Yet much of it is practically desolate. I don’t know of any European city built that way. They have low-density suburban areas, but they don’t extend so far. It goes from suburbs to rural fairly quickly. So you could have a bus that serves the whole corridor (stopping at various rural areas) along with an express (that only serves the major towns). The combination of a “local” and “express” works fairly well because the express is so different. The express is cheaper to operate and much faster than the local.

         In contrast a bus like Swift is not that much different than standard stop spacing. It isn’t that much faster than the RapidRide E (which stops every quarter mile). It isn’t like an express. It takes about an hour to get from Downtown Everett to the edge of King County on Swift. In contrast it takes about 40 minutes to catch the 512 from Downtown Everett to Northgate (which is quite a bit farther south). It doesn’t really complement the 101 either. You can’t time it — so any improvement in frequency is mostly luck. The same is true of express service (of any nature) but it usually makes up for it by being quite a bit faster.

         I think another thing that makes Swift unusual is the overall ridership levels. They are pretty low for having both a local and a limited stop bus (and an express if you count the 512). This in turn explains the fairly infrequent service on the 101 as well as the disinterest in rail for the corridor. It seems like the first thing you do is run the bus frequently with 1/4 mile stop spacing. Then you add limited stop express (if you can get the ridership). If it is crowded, you keep dropping the frequency of the main line until it is running so often that you might as well overlay other buses (or think about rail). None of that actually happened. It is an odd combination, even for North America.

      7. Normally I’d suggest just doing normal stop space balancing to 0.25/0.3 mile spacing. I proposed more severe stop spacing to try increasing the frequency further since we’re starting from 30 minute headways. But it probably unfortunately wouldn’t even garner that much benefit since with the low ridership many bus stops are probably already being skipped.

         Yeah, and I’m not sure if you can get that much savings even if riders use different stops. Assuming that you have the same ridership, the only difference is the time spent slowing down, opening and closing the doors, and then speeding up again. The actually time spent for each rider would be the same. The time spent boarding is just as big an issue. For example Muni went with off-board payment and it is considered a huge success. The time it took to board — per rider — went from 4.1 to 2.6 seconds. If you have a lot of riders that makes a big difference. In this case it would (at best) mean fewer stops, but the total dwell time would be the same.

         Just by looking at the 181, it doesn’t look like you would gain much (once you did a standard stop diet). It makes limited stops for a good part of the route. You maybe save a minute at most (total) which is way too little to go from 30 minutes to 20 minutes.

         I would say the biggest issue is the convoluted routing (https://maps.app.goo.gl/f1CeJ4HgZbZw6rYp7). That may just be one of those tricky areas, and that is the best routing. But there may be an alternative (there, or in other parts of the route). Now would be the time to consider those alternatives. This may require work by the city. Not too long ago, the 65 would detour northbound by the library*. Now it doesn’t. It goes from 125th straight up 30th. This saves time (probably more than a dramatic stop diet would).

         * You can see it if you zoom in on the old schedule: https://web.archive.org/web/20200920083449/https://www.kingcounty.gov/~/media/depts/metro/schedules/pdf/03212020/rt-065.pdf

      8. > It isn’t like an express. It takes about an hour to get from Downtown Everett to the edge of King County on Swift
         It’s not a “freeway express” but it travels pretty far in an hour. 15 miles in an hour is the same as the route 150 to kent and that uses i-5.

         > In contrast a bus like Swift is not that much different than standard stop spacing. It isn’t that much faster than the RapidRide E (which stops every quarter mile)

         I was a bit curious about that and decided to compare the swift blue to the 101 (for the shared segment) from aurora village to airport road. This is just from the schedule/google maps not live tracking.

         swift has 8 stops (1 mile stop spacing) while 101 has 29 stops (quarter mile stop spacing).

         8 am southbound swift – 34 minutes, 101 – 34 minutes
         11am: swift – 28 minutes, 101 – 32 minutes
         3 pm northbound swift – 30 minutes, 101 – 34 minutes
         6 pm northbound swift – 25 minutes, 101 – 31 minutes

         It definitely varies a bit depending on traffic/time of day but it does seem like swift can be around 10%~20% faster. Currently the swift blue runs every 15 minutes mornings, 10 minutes 6 am to 7 pm weekdays, 15 minutes 6 am to 7pm Saturday and then 20 minutes evenings as well as weekends.

         Doing some napkin math if the swift blue was implemented with quarter mile stop spacing it’s total travel time will probably increase from ~1 hour to around 1 hour and 12 minutes. Would need to drop frequency from 10 minutes to 12 minutes. and then 15 minutes to 18 minutes, 20 minutes to ~25 minutes. The midday frequency drop isn’t too bad, but the early morning and evening frequency drop is pretty bad. I think they might have to split the bus route if ran any slower though considering the long length of the 15 mile bus route any more delays/traffic and it ends up taking an hour and a half.

         It could probably shoulder up to half mile stop spacing though? Best idea I can think of for now is aurora village to airport road with half mile stop spacing (leaving mile stop spacing north of airport road) and having the 101 also using the half mile stops and head to mariner park and ride.

      9. Swift started with 10-minute frequency, as is appropriate for the BRT it’s trying to be. The drop to 20 minutes is because of budget limitations. The 101 is infrequent for the same reason. CT and I see Swift the opposite as RossB does: most riders want to get between the major nodes quickly, to either a destination or transfer there, and the local route is for the rest. The longer the route is, the more acute this becomes. Swift Blue already takes 36 minutes from Everett to Edmonds College at noon, and making it local would take even longer. You could take the 512 to downtown Lynnwood, but then you have to get from there to 99. Swift Orange only started this week, and its partly 20-minute frequency is a little lacking. The fact that both Swift Blue and the 101 are the highest-ridership routes shows that CT is doing something right with the Blue. Both of them should be more frequent.

         Swift Green also goes a long distance and takes a while: 40 minutes from Seaway TC to Canyon Park at noon, and UW Bothell extension will make it longer. Making it all local would make it less useful, because it takes so long to get somewhere.

         Swift is a way to get better bus service for longer-distance trips without the cost of rail, because of Snohomish’s lower density and transit budget compared to King County.

         Middle-level bus routes aren’t as common in other cities because rail takes that role. In New York it’s the subway, in Chicago it’s the L, in Vancouver it’s the Skytrain. If we’re not going to have rail corridors everywhere, then we need middle-level bus corridors, especially when activity centers are so far apart and many people travel all that distance.

6. I’ve noticed new signage on some link cars… Groping is a Crime. Because yeah, transit only SEEMS UNSAFE RIGHT??

   1. There are also signs all across city and region roadways that the maximum legal limit for alcohol in blood is 0.08%, and that everyone should wear their seatbelt. Does that mean driving “only SEEMS UNSAFE” ?

7. As some of you have mentioned, the situation in South King County for transit riders is not ideal. I live about a 30 minute walk from the nearest bus stop (rt 168), which comes only every 30 minutes. This means the only time I ever take transit is to go to downtown seattle and that will require some park and ride. Mike Orr, I love your idea of extending Rapid Ride I to Rainier Beach station. Upon further review I noticed the 106 and 107 currently fill in the gap between downtown Renton and Rainier Beach. It’s not a terrible transfer, but a one seat ride to the link from the entire 104th/108th corridor would be great. I would love a bus service along 212th/208th street that connects with Angle lake station. Pretty much every south link station should have a bus service crossing the Green River Valley to serve the plateau, even if its just a 30 minute bus service.

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