Metro Seeking Input on RapidRide K

50 Replies to “Metro Seeking Input on RapidRide K”

1. Thanks for talking through this.

   I agree that if the K has a great transfer at East Main, there’s no call to move the Downtown Bellevue stop further east.

   However, I don’t see how the Wilburton transfer can be called a decent replacement. Under all options, the bus will cross 405 on 10th and then turn north on 116th, with a stop on the corner. Assuming it’s right at the corner (unlike the existing stops), that’s 700 feet from the north entrance to Wilburton Station to the northbound bus stop, plus another 150 feet (across the street) for the southbound bus stop. That’s about equal to the distance from Bellevue Downtown Station to 108th, which people are correctly saying is too far.

   Also, I’m very disappointed this route is still jogging back and forth between Bellevue College and 148th Ave. Won’t someone please resurface Snoqualmie River Road to dramatically speed up the buses? Especially now that it’s going to be called Rapid Ride?

   1. Snoqualmie River Road looks like it’s in progress:

      https://bellevuewa.gov/city-government/departments/transportation/projects/transportation-capital-projects/bellevue-college-connection

2. While I think it’s very important to have a Link transfer, as long as one station is an easy transfer that seems to be enough for regional tripmaking. After that, I think it’s the route’s ability to serve local direct trips that I think needs to be the primary focus of the route design.

   With that in mind, I would suggest the westmost alignment options (108th, SE 8th) for the Downtown Bellevue options.

   I particularly like the East Main transfer — and the car dealers at 116th and Main aren’t that bad of a walk (distance and grade) from East Main Station while the offices near SE 8th (like Bellefield) are. Plus, I think the Link transfer point to Bellevue College should be as close as possible.

3. It really is too bad that the complete 2 Line hasn’t been running for the past year as originally intended. The transfer information could have really informed the alignment decisions.

   It even makes me wonder if final alignment decisions for the Downtown stretches should be held back until fall of 2026 — especially since Metro won’t need to go to construction until 2027 or 2028 (planned opening in 2030).

   1. Generally transit restructures are done before Link opens in a region. Transit restructures can be a years long process with numerous public and stakeholder meetings. Even then cities and stakeholders often change their minds during the process. This is what happened during the Eastside transit restructure when it was assumed the full Line 2 would open in 2023.

      Before and after the pandemic is like night and day on the Eastside when it comes to work and transit. Even between 2022 when the Eastside transit restructure was completed and today is night and day. In 2022 it was still hoped the new normal would eventually return to 2019. Microsoft’s withdrawal from Bellevue shows that won’t happen. The commute to downtown Seattle is probably the biggest change for transit on the Eastside and that isn’t coming back.

      Bus routes can change. Much if not all of East Link is based on areas that are not dense or vibrant today developing into dense and vibrant areas with people who want or need to take transit. That new development has been very slow to materialized and was planned pre-pandemic. The Eastside simply doesn’t have the density to make living without a car possible. Even Bellevue Way from Main to NE 8th is too far to walk for most. Hence the free but pretty lame shuttle.

      If you live on the Eastside or in Issaquah you understand how little of the Eastside East Link serves. People on this blog talk about having to walk 1/4 mile to a station. I am 15 miles from S. Bellevue Park and Ride and today there isn’t any stop along the route including Seattle or Redmond I need or want to go. The total Issaquah region has over 150,000 residents.

      I think there will be changes to the Eastside transit restructure once East Link opens. For my region one of those will be a direct one seat bus to downtown Seattle with just a few stops downtown and maybe SLU although Eastside Amazon workers are switching to the Bellevue office and in reality go into the office maybe 2X/week.

      When it comes to transit north of Bellevue the question will be whether a one seat bus to UW or downtown Seattle is faster than transferring to Link to go around the lake. With changes to 520 exits a bus will be pretty quick to UW, and Link doesn’t go to SLU or First Hill (which the 630 does). Avoiding a transfer on 3rd downtown is paramount for most eastsiders.

      I think Al is correct changes to the transit restructure will be necessary, but the route East Link takes should remind everyone that stakeholders on the Eastside don’t prioritize the rider when it comes to station or bus location including the downtown Bellevue transit center which is in an office desert, and some stakeholders wish was even farther east, like 116th.

      I don’t know how travel patterns will emerge in 2025 when the full East Link opens, if it does. It is almost five years delayed, but the delay has not really affected the Eastside while so much has changed since 2018. Metro has cut a number of peak trips to Seattle and transit ridership is way down and a lot of development along East. Link on hold. It could be decades depending on population growth and urbanization on the Eastside until the potential of East Link is realized of 50,000 riders/day and the final transit restructure to complement East Link is realized or understood. Until then I think any transit restructure will be more about competition between East Link and a one seat bus to the same destination with a more direct route. Hopefully by then Issaquah Link is built and operating.

      1. What kind of “stakeholder” would want the Bellevue Transit Center to be on 116th? Oh, of course. The auto dealers! Now there’s a business that is a major attractor of transit trips.

         If as you say the entire East Side is wedded to auto usage, why would Metro want to run empty direct buses to Sixth Avenue (as far from Third as a bus can go) and SLU? Or for that matter, why would Sound Transit want to build Line 4?

         Going beyond Lynnwood is and always has been crazy; there’s no “there” there, though there may be someday because of climate refugees. Build it when they have started to come. Link will stop a mile short of Downtown Tacoma above an empty stroad; two of its four new stations will have casinos. That’s a first for American public transit, though Las Vegas’ soon-to-close monorail serves six of them.

         West Seattle is a monumental waste of $4+ billion dollars to make 90% of its riders worse off, and Ballard Link seems jinxed by NIMBY fights and the Coast Guard. And that’s not to mention that formerly flush North King Sub-Area is um, er, ah….facing a bit of a shortage since so much B&O revenue is coming from the auxiliary bedrooms of tech bros around the region, not Downtown/SLU anymore.

         Time for a re-vote. Seattle can figure out a cheaper way to serve SLU.

      2. There’s a huge upzone planned for the area where the car dealers are in Wilburton along 116th. I think it’s a mistake to bypass this area with the K where 40 story high rises are planned. Personally I’d bring the line in across the NE 4th overpass until the 6th street overpass is built… gets a better bite at the heart of the new Wilburton neighborhood.

      3. “stakeholders on the Eastside don’t prioritize the rider when it comes to station or bus location”

         That happens everywhere including Seattle. The 1/2/3 Line transfers downtown threaten to be barely usable. Capitol Hill has one station instead of six (First Hill, Bellevue/Pine, 15th/Thomas, 23rd/Aloha, 520 interchange). Ballard station threatens to be on 14th, effectively 8 blocks from the center (20th) — not 6 blocks because of the distance between 15th and 14th. ST refused to build a transfer stub into U-District Station for a 45th line. Lynnwood Link and Federal Way Link are on I-5 instead of 99. Large SLU businesses tried to move the SLU stations to where they’d be less useful for transfers and walk-ups in order to minimize temporary construction disruption, although ST rejected that. The SODO alternatives don’t maximize transfer convenience and keeping the busway. In Shoreline and Lynnwood ST deleted down escalators to save money. And probably more.

      4. @poncho, if the K doesn’t go there, the 240 and 246 could?

   2. Restructures normally start a year before opening, from the first public proposal to the county council vote six months later. The sounding boards may start before that, but that’s the first public review.

      Some big restructures like U-Link started a year before that to give time for a major public debate and more proposal rounds.

      The East Link restructure and a few others are dragging on far beyond their intended completion date because Link’s openings are four years late. This creates a need to re-review them in the last year in case the situation on the ground has changed. Metro re-asked the stakeholders (city governments, large employers) in January-March but did not re-ask the public. As far as we know, the quasi-final routes will not be changed further when it goes to the county council, unless the stakeholders asked for something new and Metro agreed.

      I’ve started a follow-up article on Bellevue transfers in 2030, when the full 2 Line, East Link restructure, Swift 1 & 2, and K Line will be completed. We can discuss the larger issues of all Eastside transfers there. It will take a few day to finish the article. In the meantime, please put impacts of RapidRide K and its alternatives here, and that will help inform the other article, and the result of the other article will help inform what feedback we might want to give on the K.

   3. Just to be clear, I’m only suggesting deferring starting construction on a few RapidRide stops — and each option could still be designed. The construction could be delayed until 2027 or 2028 as the line opens in 2030 per Metro. It doesn’t seem to require revisiting a system restructure.

4. I think East Link station placement could certainly have been improved, but from what I can see it is quite workable. It goes through all the densest destinations on the Eastside: downtown Bellevue, Overlake, Microsoft, and downtown Redmond

   I don’t think it’s accurate to say that Bellevue TC is in an office desert. If anything it’s the opposite, and the TC overprioritizes office workers over residents and visitors. That might have been a decent choice pre-pandemic, but I agree that looking forward I don’t see office work returning in the same way.

   I assume another station closer to the Bellevue downtown park was skipped due to cost concerns?

   I don’t know if you’ve been to the East Link stations recently but urbanization is not coming to the eastside in the future: it is coming right now. The station areas are filled with apartments, offices, or cranes. Downtown Redmond is probably the most dramatic

   1. Oops, this was supposed to be a reply to @Issaquah Resident

   2. A Bellevue Square station was skipped because of Kemper Freeman’s strong opposition.

      Aside from that, I agree East Link is on the least-bad general route possible. There’re a lot of tweaks I would’ve done (such as stations at 140th, 51st, and 60th; and moving the Downtown Bellevue station west); but no major rerouting changes.

   3. “I don’t think it’s accurate to say that Bellevue TC is in an office desert.”

      The concern is 112th on east, which is half of Belleve Downtown Station’s walkshed.

5. While most of the comments, to this point, have nothing to do with the K Line options presented in this post, I’ll try to stay on-topic.

   When deciding on the South of Downtown Bellevue routing, don’t forget about this currently under construction, affordable multifamily development southwest of the Wilburton P&R.

   https://news.theregistryps.com/srm-advances-on-135-unit-workforce-multifamily-project-near-downtown-bellevue/

   Another thing to keep in mind about the “Option 1” Main Street routing, while this might at first glance seem like the obvious choice, because 116th and Main is closer to a lot of retail (and future development) around 116th and 4th, there won’t even be a K Line bus near 116th and Main. One stop is across the bridge on the west side of 405, and the other stop is 100 yards east of 116th and Main, and then it’s another 200 yard walk to get to NE 4th.

   Regarding should the K Line be on 110th or 108th, this where more information would be helpful. For example, of those riding the K Line near this location, what percentage of riders are estimated to: 1, Stay on the bus. 2, Transfer at the BTC to another bus. 3, Get off and walk to a nearby business or residence. Or, 4, Transfer to Link at the Bellevue Downtown station. Knowing those estimates would help inform the decision on which street to run the K Line.

   1. Also worth factoring in is the B line will be extended west to UDistrict via Bellevue Way and SR-520 (replacing the 271 but via Bellevue Way between NE 8th & 520 in this leg)… worth considering how these two RapidRides intersect.

      1. That’s not true.

      2. You might be thinking of the route 270?

      3. @Sam

         Currently the 271 uses sr 520 and crosses lakes Washington. In east link connections that section from Bellevue to uw will be replaced with the 270.

         In metro connects and the Rapidride prioritization documents they will splice the b line into an east west line and a north south line. With the b+270/271 going from uw to Bellevue to crossroads.

      4. WL, will the route crossing the 520 bridge to the UW be called the B Line?

      5. @Sam

         I don’t know what they will call it. It’s probably 50/50 that they’ll call the east-west line the b line. The other one is the north-south line

         You can view it in the map below they call the east-west one the B-271 route

         https://platform.remix.com/project/d0616992?latlng=47.46204,-122.42211,9.078

      6. Hmmm, I could be wrong. Poncho, my bad. I still can’t tell if it will be one route or two. Why would they refer to a future RapidRide Line that goes to the UW as the B Line/271? And will there still be a route 270? Very confusing.

      7. In the East Link restructure in 2025, route 271 will be replaced by routes 203, 220, 249, and 270:

         * 270: Bellevue TC to U-District via north Bellevue Way. (I.e., faster and serving lots of apartments.

         * 249: Moves to 84th to backfill Medina. (Currently on north Bellevue Way.)

         * 220: Bellevue TC to Bellevue College.

         * 203: Closest equivalent to Newport Way & Issaquah service. South Bellevue Station, Factoria, Newport Way, Issaquah TC, north Issaqah north of I-90, Issaquah Highlands P&R. Doesn’t serve downtown Bellevue or Eastgate.

         These are in my “quasi-final routes” link above.

         Separately, the RapidRide reorganization has two candidate projects to split the B. (Pages 64 and 68.) Corridor 3101+1028 would combine the east-west part of the B with the 270. Corridor 1999 would combine the north-south part of the B with the “226” (156th, Bellevue College, Eastgate, South Bellevue Station). None of these are approved or funded yet. They’ll be sometime after the I, J, K, and R, if ever.

      8. the conceptual split of the B Line and hooking the west part to a translake route is only a planner concept today. It has had little analysis and process.

6. Thinking outside the box a bit, I would like a K line that stays on 116th to 4th, takes 4th to Bellevue Way, loops back to 116th via Main, then continues to Eastgate. With good Link connections at both Wilburton and East Main St. Station, the Link connection at downtown Bellevue station is not necessary. You get service to the Target, REI, Home Depot, Best Buy, and Trader Joe’s near 116th and 4th, which transit currently treats as an afterthought because the bus routes were set before any of those places existed. Meanwhile, by going to Bellevue Way, this route serves downtown Bellevue itself better than the proposals, which act as though the transit center is everyone’s destination.

   What’s lost? Under my route, the bus wouldn’t serve Bellevue Transit Center, but it would still offer connections to the same bus routes at other stops. For instance, you could transfer to the B line at 8th/116th or the 226 at 12th/116th. I guess somebody connecting to a STRIDE bus to Renton would have to walk from 4th to 6th, but that feels hardly the end of the world.

   There’s this knee jerk assumption when designing bus routes that transfers have to happen at transit centers. But nobody steps back and asks the question of whether the route that puts the transfers at the transit center is really the route that gets people where they’re going most efficiently.

   1. Agreed. There is no reason for transfers to occur at transit centers. The main reason transit centers exist is to give buses a place to lay over. Sometimes they are the best option for a transfer, but often times they aren’t.

   2. I agree that transit center obsessiveness isn’t required, and once an area is dense and spread out enough like Bellevue they can actually become a hindrance. That’s because it can take several minutes to get to one — where staying on a major street without the deviation can be more productive. Then, once at the transit center there still may a bit of a walk if every route is given a layover spot.

      Add to that the impact of high frequent, reliable, all-day light rail. A rider will just want to get to any Link station rather than only the Downtown Bellevue one to transfer. That’s even true to a lesser extent for RapidRide operations. Outside of connecting to Stride and Express buses, a rider will not really need to go to BTC to transfer. And waiting at all those long signals to turn is a huge time waste.

      Once large enough, something like Third Ave in Seattle seems like a better setup. If Seattle had a Downtown transit center instead it would be an operational nightmare.

      I theorize that BTC could even be called a “regional express bus hub” to reflect what I think it should morph into.

   3. I like your idea, but if you’re making that much of a detour, I’d decouple the K-line altogether. Have the K-North (250?) run south along 116th to Main, turn west, go past East Main Station, and end in a loop around Bellevue Downtown Park to serve Old Bellevue and Bellevue Square. Then, have the K-South take whichever option you want and end at the Bellevue Transit Center.

      1. That would be even better, assuming Metro is able to find the layover space in downtown Bellevue. My working assumption is that Metro is seeking to combine routes in order to avoid that.

      2. This. The proposed K-Line route is pretty darn long. How many people are going to ride from Totem Lake to Eastgate, especially with all the to-ing and fro-ing around downtown Bellevue? Some, sure, but not many. Then the K-South could go to UW also, giving five minute headways between Bellvue TC and UW. Maybe that’s “overkill”, but it be a high-quality link between the regions two very active number two activity centers.

      3. “it would be”…

      4. The E line is also very long, but gets a lot of ridership. Obviously it has other advantages in that it’s very straight which lets it run fast, but most people are also not going to be riding it from Aurora Village all the way downtown. I imagine the K line will be similar, where a lot of its ridership will be intra-neighborhood or between adjacent neighborhoods, and not Totem Lake to Eastgate.

      5. Most of the RapidRide lines are 10-13 miles long. This one appears to also be about that length. Maybe it’s 14-15 miles at most.

      6. “How many people are going to ride from Totem Lake to Eastgate”

         That’s not very important. Think about it as two lines interlined at Bellevue TC. It’s much more efficient to combine them into one route, and it supports shorter trip across the centerpoint (e.g., north Bellevue to south Bellevue). It’s not clear there’s much demand for Kirkland to Bellevue College. That would be dwarfed by all the other trips. A faster alternative for Totem Lake – Bellevue College would be Stride 2 to Bellevue TC + 220 to Bellevue College.

      7. The only time I can think of when I’ve ever had reason to ride the bus from Kirkland to Eastgate was to connect with Trailhead Direct. For that trip, found taking the 240 to the 250 (essentially the proposed K line, but with a transfer) to be faster than riding the 245 all the way. However, Trailhead Direct really should be using South Bellevue rather than Eastgate, in order to connect with the 2 line – if not now, certainly when the full 2 line opens.

      8. Skylar, sure, the line will be a success. It is made up of the good segments of several existing POBS lines. I wasn’t saying that the route as a whole does not need RapidRide. I was agreeing with William that it would be improved by splitting it in half and adding some sort of shortish tail to the “away” side of Downtown Bellevue of each line.

      9. In terms of ridership and routes, the longer the better. The straighter the better as well. You want every trip combination to be reasonable, even if it isn’t common. I’m not sure exactly what is being proposed, but Totem Lake to Eastgate is a perfectly reasonable trip pair.

         In contrast you want to avoid looping routes. A good example of this is the streetcar, especially if it is extended. Various trip combinations make no sense at all. Riders are better off just walking, or taking a bus that is more direct.

         But there are drawbacks to really long routes. You are more likely to have delays. Delays are bad by their very nature, but with a long route you have a bigger chance of bus bunching. There is also a limit to how much time a driver can spend on a particular route. The RapidRide E is very long, but it is also very fast. It doesn’t take that long for a driver to go from one place to another. I don’t know if that is the case with this route.

      10. Your comment about straightness gives me another idea. Run the K line straight through from downtown Kirkland to downtown Bellevue along State St , Lake Washington Blvd. and Bellevue Way. No South Kirkland park and ride detour, no 116th Ave. detour, just a straight shot from Kirkland Transit Center to Lincoln Square along the shortest possible route, still stopping at regular bus stops along the way, but not going out of the way chase imaginary riders. Then, after Lincoln Square, the bus could turn east on 4th St. to 120th, serving the retail complex, then take Lake Hills connector down to Bellevue College and Eastgate.

          I could see this being a nice route, as it stitches together a lot of big shopping destinations in a mostly straight line. But, it has some catches, namely needing to skip South Kirkland park and ride and Overlake Hospital. The bus would also get hid hard by holiday shopping traffic near Bellevue Square, which would impact reliability downstream.

          Still, this is a route that excites me much more than what Metro is actually proposing, as it’s something that could actually get him from home to Bellevue Square in the same time or less than driving, once the overhead of searching for parking in Kemper Freeman’s giant garage is factored in. It serves the retail complex east of 405, turning what’s currently a transit desert into an on-the-way destination.

          I also don’t feel like the losses would be that bad. You could still get to Overlake Hospital by walking from Bellevue Way, and the K line would directly serve Evergreen Hospital at the Totem Lake end anyway. It skirts around Link, but 4th to 6th at 112th is not that far of a walk, and to go to Seattle, Redmond, or Microsoft, you have better bus options anyway (e.g. route 245, 250, 255->1 line). South Kirkland park and ride, what route are you trying to connect to? You can catch the 255 at Kirkland Transit Center, or, in some cases, just walk to a 255 stop directly from home. The number of homes in places in South Kirkland where this route and the 255 would have big elevation gaps are vanishingly small; those people all have cars, and can drive to south Kirkland park and ride to ride the 255, which they are probably doing today anyway (if they ride the bus at all, which most do not), rather than transfer from the 250.

          Overall, I guess it boils down to the classic ridership/coverage tradeoff. I think my route would be better for ridership, while Metro’s route is better for coverage. And the outcome of these debates usually gets resolved in favor of coverage.

      11. @asdf2, I do like the Bellevue Way straight-shot! Even if we divert it to Bellevue Transit Center (on NE 8th), it does feel much more direct from Kirkland.

7. Another option might be to travel down 108th, pass through the P+R, then travel down Bellevue Way (see image below). From there, some options include:
   – East on 10th and south 116th; direct service to the hospital with a transfer to Link at Wilburton (blue on the map below)
   – East on 8th, south on 110th, east on 4th, south on 116th; direct service to Bellevue TC (orange on the map below)
   – East on 4th, south on 116 (similar to what you suggested); direct service to Bellevue Square with a transfer to Link at the TC (green on the map below)

   https://i.imgur.com/NI4hLVg.png

   Travelling down Bellevue Way opens up much more of downtown Bellevue. Unfortunately it overlaps heavily with the 270, which would likely need to get kicked to 116th

   1. Oops, meant to reply to @asdf2. The comment box keeps throwing me off

      1. Go up to the parent comment and click its “Reply”.

   2. Here’s a more full-fledged idea: https://i.imgur.com/5KouiBX.png
      – K (in blue) travels south on 108th, zags back on Northup, south on Bellevue way, then east on 8th, south on 110th, east on 4th, south on 116th
      – 255 (in red) is unchanged; south on Lake Wash, then east to the 108th HOV ramp
      – 270 (in purple) exits on the 108th HOV ramp, south on 116th, west on 10th, south on 110th to Bellevue TC
      – Transfer point at the highlighted area (potential flyer stops)

      Benefits:
      – 270 has an easier time exiting the freeway
      – Very high frequencies for the K line to U District transfer
      – Same amount of service to South Kirkland P+R

      1. Actually quite a neat idea, I quite like it how all three routes can meet and both sr 520 lines can actually use the hov ramps.

      2. Nice plan!

         But does the 270 really need to run on 116th? Northup is already served by the 249; the 226 turns off 116th on 12th. Could we move the 270 to 112th? It’d be more direct, and I think there’s as much there as in the part of 116th we’d be abandoning.

         (Unfortunately this means it won’t meet your transfer stop, but people will be able to transfer to the 255 at Yarrow Point.)

      3. I think there’s much more to serve on 116th. The biggest destination on 116th is the hospital but there are also a lot more offices on Northup/116th as well

         Honestly the transfer from the K line to the 270 would likely be pretty mediocre (a 3~5 minute walk), but I think it would be workable, and would easily be worth it if flyer stops were added for 520-running buses like the 542 and 545

8. Another potential option I guess one could consider is route the K on 108th, as proposed, while cutting the 255 back to peak-only and replacing it by having the 270 detour into South Kirkland park and ride.

   The idea of this proposal is that it would save a *lot* of service hours from the 255 that could be used to make other routes more frequent, and a trip downtown could be done by the K/2-line combination, so similar to today, just with the transfer at Bellevue rather than the U district.

   I personally don’t care for this option, and feel like it would be slower than what the 255 offers today. But, the service hours saved would be a lot, and I can see this pattern getting forced as part of a round of service cuts in a future recession, then staying around even after the recession ends.

   It would be a good move for Kirkland Bellevue riders – with the 255 gone, the could probably run all day every 10 minutes. But, a trip to Seattle would be worse, and would likely result in a lot of people who currently catch the bus by their house driving to park and rides to avoid the transfer. It would also hurt Bellevue to U district trip, as these riders would be forced to sit through a detour into and out of South Kirkland park and ride.

   Nonetheless, I would not be surprised if, like it or not, this eventually happens, at least during non-rush-hour.

   1. I’m not sure about this; the Totem Lake – Juanita – Kirkland leg of the route gets a decent amount of ridership, and Kirkland – UW is fairly busy when school is in session.

9. Is there a reason Metro didn’t make a local route following the K’s path for East Link Connections? The old 169 and 180 were combined into the 160 to shadow the future I Line, and ridership on those corridors went up. 108th and 124th in Kirkland from what I’ve seen do not have very high ridership, so wouldn’t it make sense to build ridership on those corridors before putting the K in service?

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