95 Replies to “RapidRide Future and Prioritization”

1. Can someone explain the B Line-route 271 through-routing to the UW? Even after reading this post, I’m still not clear on how this route will work. Will the B Line+271 eventually become one route, and be called by just one route number or name for the entirety of the route? Or, for example, will it be like the Magnolia route 24 that around downtown Seattle turns into a route 124 to TIBS? Also, will the 270 still exist? If so, why will there be two different frequent routes from the Bellevue TC to the UW?

   1. Hi, so comparing from post east link restructures with the new route 270 from uw to Bellevue. the B Line + 271 would take over the new route 270 and the portion of rapidride b from Bellevue to crossroads mall.

      > Will the B Line+271 eventually become one route, and be called by just one route number or name for the entirety of the route?

      It’d just be one route name. The easiest way to view it would be at: https://platform.remix.com/project/d0616992?latlng=47.46204,-122.42211,9.078

      > Also, will the 270 still exist? If so, why will there be two different frequent routes from the Bellevue TC to the UW?

      The 270 would not exist. It’s just called the b line + 271 because currently the route is called 271.

      1. Thanks for that. Will the one route that takes the place of the B Line and route 271 be called the B Line or route 271? Another way of putting it, what type of route will the new route that crosses the lake be? A RapidRide route, or a regular, non-RapidRide route?

      2. The B would be split where it turns at Crossroads.

         The east-west part would go west to Bellevue TC as it does now, then it would go north on Bellevue Way and west on 520 to the U-District. The part north/west of Bellevue TC will be pioneered by the 270 in the East Link restructure, then later the east-west RapidRide will take it over.

         The north-south part would go from downtown Redmond to Overlake, Crossroads, Bellevue College, Eastgate, to South Bellevue station. (It would not serve Factoria.) Metro calls this “226” but that’s only true south of Main Street. The core of the route in Overlake, Crossroads, and Lake Hills will be on 156th, not 164, so it’s really more like the 245. The extension to South Bellevue station doesn’t exist yet but will be added to the 226 in the East Link restructure. This affects me directly and is part of the 2 Line article I promised Sam (and am still writing). If Metro goes ahead with upgrading the east-west part of the B but can’t do the north-south part yet, it will have to turn the north-south part into a regular bus route until it can be upgraded to RapidRide.

      3. The rapid ride buses are slow and crowded just wasteful spending. Spend money on direct bus service instead the the new bus routes are slow they make loops. Lynnwood has a better rapid ride system. The rapid ride is combined with local routes

      4. I rode the full length of the Swift Orange Line last week. Two of the seven passengers who got on board were Fare Ambassadors. The loop-de-loop at Ash Way P&R adds 3-4 minutes to the trip. If the RapidRide B Line is slower, one reason may be that it has passengers.

2. Thanks to Wesley for becoming an STB author and planning this series. It gives us more strategic content that we all like to read and can use. And another set of eyes and opinions to evaluate ideas with.

   1. Welcome, Wesley! Great post!

3. The 1049 (150) would be the first RapidRide with a freeway express component.

   1. re Route 150
      In the aughts, during BRT planning, Transit made a conscience choice against freeway alignments. At the time, routes 41, 71-72-73, 101, 194, 150 might have been strong candidates. Those making the recommendations also wanted to avoid ST corridors, not really appreciating how long ST would take.

      During the great recession, new revenue was needed to implement RR and the partnership routes; under subarea equity, a south line was necessary to balance out the new hours to 40-40-20. The strongest South lines were also 50-50 lines, straddling the subarea borders (e.g., routes 101, 150, 124). Route 140 was the strongest south-only candidate.

   2. Unless either of the Eastside routes get there first (either the 271 to UW, or Eastgate – South Bellevue tail on 90.)

4. RapidRide buses remind me a bit of Greenways. It isn’t entirely clear what they offer, although they promise to offer something. As I see it, RapidRide typically comes with the following:

   1) Different colored buses.
   2) Frequent service.
   3) Right-of-way improvements.
   4) Off board payment.
   5) Stop diet.

   The only thing that is truly unique is the different colored buses. RapidRide is often frequent, but other buses are frequent as well. For example the 3/4 runs every 7.5 minutes in the middle of the day, while the A runs every 10 minutes.

   RapidRide buses often have BAT lanes and bus lanes, but lots of other buses have that as well. As we’ve seen with the 7 and 40, some of the boldest improvements in right-of-way have taken place for regular buses. They took lanes on major corridors and gave them to “regular” buses. Likewise, the right-of-way improvements for 520 buses are huge, and will make a big difference for those going across the lake.

   There is a definite correlation between off-board payment and RapidRide. This is probably the biggest value that is added when a route becomes RapidRide. But it is not unique to RapidRide, nor should it be. We added off board payment downtown (on Third) and before that it existed in the tunnel (for all the buses). It would make sense to have off-board payment around Link stations that are transit hubs (like Northgate).

   Stop diets outside of RapidRide are unusual, but they shouldn’t be. We should apply them system wide. There is no reason why a bus that is red and yellow should have different stop spacing than one that is green and yellow.

   It is easy to brush these concerns away. If the only thing that is truly unique about RapidRide is how you pay, then applying this at route level is quite reasonable. But there is a real cost when it comes to our RapidRide system. It reduces flexibility. For example, the 40 is rather long. If nothing else it would be nice if the D took over the northern tale of the 40. Then the 40 could continue on 85th and eventually connect to Northgate. Better yet, the 61 could be extended to Ballard, and the 40 could layover there as well. The D would be a bit long, but not nearly as long as the 40 is right now. The other buses would be a good length. Overall it just looks like a better network. But we can’t do that because the buses are different colors. This lack of flexibility hinders our ability to build a more robust network.

   The choice of RapidRide routes seems rather arbitrary. Is it aimed at buses that carry a lot of riders per service hour? If so, then why is the 3/4 or 8 not on the list. Are new routes meant to leverage existing infrastructure? If so, then why isn’t the 5 slated for RapidRide (since it could use many of the Aurora “stations” that the E uses). Worse yet, it seems like there is no attempt at building a network based on the routes (for example, RapidRide G). I suppose that isn’t the fault of the RapidRide system, but it shows the weakness of it. If you didn’t plan on basing your network on these routes, then why build them? RapidRide just seems like a hodge-podge of routes chosen somewhat arbitrarily, with little thought to the network.

   1. re Ross4
      The RR practice has been off-board payment with transponders at the busiest stops termed stations. But the actual objective should be all-door boarding and alighting, achieved with either off-board or on-board transponders. In Vancouver Route 99B uses on-board transponders; at the rear double doors, there were two rows of tapping riders: real snare drum. Here, Metro has added transponders to some rear doors. Where can transponders best be maintained and protected from the elements and vandalism, on-board or at the stations?

      1. I’m not sure what the terms are, so allow me to use the following:

         1) Pay as you board. This is what happens with most of our buses. It means that someone messing around with change can delay a bus (if the driver decides to wait for them). It means that everyone pays up front, so even if everyone just taps their ORCA card it can delay the bus.

         2) Off-board payment. Requires special machines.

         3) Multi-door payment. You pay on the bus, but the driver doesn’t wait for you. There are several places to pay on the bus.

         The last two are similar. Routes will often be a combination of the two. They both require proof of payment. This means that security has to check to see whether you paid or not. Both allow people to board at any door.

         The difference between the last two seems relatively minor. Either way it involves proof-of-payment, and you avoid the worse delays. Off board seems ideal, as it works well even if the bus is really crowded. Multi-door payment seems cheaper and easier to maintain. We have more bus stops than buses and they are all in one place. A hybrid is fine as well. That way you can always make a multi-door payment if the stop doesn’t have off-board payment (or the machine is broken). You can focus the off-board payment stops in areas where you get lots of rides (this has been the practice of various RapidRide routes).

         What do other agencies do? San Fransisco is entirely off-board payment now. But San Fransisco is a fairly small (but dense) area. Metro sprawls, just like the county. How much would it cost to go with multi-door payment on all the buses? That would simplify things for the users, and offer the most flexibility in terms of the fleet. But that means a lot of people making sure that a rider paid. If that is too expensive, maybe we have a hybrid system? That is basically what we have now (some buses are RapidRide, some buses aren’t). But in this case it would be far more widespread. Instead of analyzing each route in great detail and promising something special for it, just convert the top fifty routes (in ridership per hour) to RapidRide. Sure, some aren’t that fast but that is true of RapidRide in general. Thus RapidRide means proof-of-payment (and likely a combination of off-board and multi-door payment) instead of a mythical promise of BRT.

   2. The dilemma is similar to the coverage vs frequency debate. Should we have more RapidRide coverage or should we focus on making existing routes be more effective?

      Metro seems to want to repeat ST’s approach of “only Link technology” and applying it everywhere that doesn’t have it today. Even doing all this long-range thinking seems to be inspired by matching ST’s long-range planning push.

      Of course, many of these RapidRide corridors could go from concept to running in just a few years. That flexibility and the lower construction durations are big advantages of the program. It seems to me that new needs could even emerge with Link opening that could change what future RapidRide lines should be.

      Meanwhile, there seems to be a lack of going back and enhancing the RapidRide routes that we already have. Given how many are so much more important than many of these new planned routes, should the program look at enhancing those with better design or more service?

   3. I think there’s another, less tangible benefit of rapidride. The amount of investment, infrastructure, and frequency of rapidride lends a certain sense of long-term security about the route. As in: if I’m looking to start a business, buy a house, or start a job at a particular location along a rapidride route, I can be reasonably confident that there will still be frequent service there in 10 or 20 years, which helps me commit to investing long-term. Lesser bus routes are moved, truncated, deleted, or reduced service depending on changing situations and political environments. Granted, the highest ridership routes are less likely to be altered than lower ridership routes, but that’s harder for a lay person to discern and there’s still some doubt about it.

      1. I think the “intangible” aspects of branding a line as a sort of quasi-BRT (a watering-down of the label of “RapidRide BRT” in the 2006 Transit Now measure which birthed the lines) is actually the whole point. The more a bus can be branded like a train, the more you’re going to get people willing to trust the bus the same they would trust a train, but also the more grant funding you can get from all sorts of capital project oriented sources.

         If Metro wanted to just offer faster and/or more reliable service on a route, they could just run more buses and work with city DOTs for reliability improvements (queue jumps, bus lanes, etc.). But that’s not the point – the point is for each project to represent a large enough capital investment that cities can plan around it (trusting that the investment won’t be wasted due to its size and legal mandates for service), and also big enough that the FTA would be willing to pitch in for it.

   4. Agreed. It does really seem like a bus branded red… the joke about BRT creep nationwide. So why can’t some of these routes start now with their rebrand and new routing, with the modest infrastructure improvements, branded shelters and off board payment coming later… Merging the 36 & 49 seems easy to make happen.

   5. > But there is a real cost when it comes to our RapidRide system. It reduces flexibility.

      But that is one of the benefits! You can *know*, when you look at a RapidRide route, that the bus is the bus and the route is the route – it’s not going to suddenly have its stops moved somewhere else, it’s not going to suddenly get merged with some other bus line, it’s not going to suddenly become two different routes with the same number, one of which will take you home while the other won’t, have fun figuring that out. No, the inflexibility of RapidRide means you can count on that route, almost as surely as you can count on a streetcar, whose tracks aren’t going anywhere.

   6. > RapidRide buses often have BAT lanes and bus lanes, but lots of other buses have that as well. As we’ve seen with the 7 and 40, some of the boldest improvements in right-of-way have taken place for regular buses. They took lanes on major corridors and gave them to “regular” buses. Likewise, the right-of-way improvements for 520 buses are huge, and will make a big difference for those going across the lake.

      While that is true — that is mostly only for Seattle. Or I guess perhaps I can qualify the statement and say for cities outside of Seattle without rapidride they are even more unlikely to implement bus/BAT lanes.

      For Seattle, it might not matter as much whether or not to include the rapidride branding

   7. Metro often runs red RapidRide buses on Route 7. It’s so common that the locals don’t even notice.

5. At what point will Rapid Ride simply become the standard for bus service? The current version & vision of RapidRide offers very little difference from “normal” sevice, such as:

   -Most stops have simple shelters and the sidewalks aren’t raised, m
   -All RapdiRide routes stop every 3-5 blocks – just like a normal route (some areas even less).
   -off-board payment is not available at most stops.
   -with the exception of the new G-line, vehicles are no different from the rest of the fleet
   -bus lanes are being installed at crucial choke points for all transit – not just RapidRide

   Addtionally, we need to rethink off-board payemnt. Orca machines are constantly vandalized and cost $$$ to replace each unit. They’re drastically less likely to be vandalized if they’re positioned at each door. And center-running lanes/stops are neat but pose a serious operational issue if a bus breaksdown. A replacement MUST be the exact same type of coach.

   The entire concept of RapidRide needs to be reconsidered. Unless we’re creating legitmate BRT, we shouldn’t be investing so many resources into a few corridors.

   1. This gets back to what I wrote up above (https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/07/23/rapidride-future-and-prioritization/#comment-936501). RapidRide really isn’t special, with the exception of one thing: There is proof of payment. This means the driver doesn’t wait for you to pay. It also means that you can board at any door. The proof of payment may take place at a bus stop (which they call a “station”) or on board (near a door). Other than that, their is nothing unique about them.

      This gives value to the branding. If I see a RapidRide bus, I know I can board at any door (and this is the way I’ll pay). If I see a Metro bus with different colors, I have to board and pay up front. Since this is the only significant difference, I see no reason why this process should be tied to everything else. To a certain extent that is happening now. Regular buses (e. g. the 7 and 40) are getting improvements that many RapidRide buses can only dream of. This would be the same idea, but in reverse. There is no reason why we can’t just convert dozens of routes to RapidRide (i. e. proof-of-payment) and nothing else. No change in service, no additional right-of-way, no special bus stops, no fixating on reroutes — just proof of payment. Thus the RapidRide changes could come in waves as we hire more fare enforcers (or “fare ambassadors”) along with the changes to the buses. I would abandon the letters and just retain the number. If the 44 changes to RapidRide, it is still the 44 (not the BB). Meanwhile, the other changes happen independently.

      The other alternative is to just go with proof-of-payment for the entire system (like they did in San Fransisco). If we do that, then there is no reason to have RapidRide as there is no value to the branding.

   2. Speaking of resources and money, I think fare recovery on the proof-of-payment RapidRide must now be quite low. I haven’t seen any fare enforcement inspectors on a B Line bus, or waiting at any B Line stops, in the last five years.

      1. I was thinking the same thing Sam. Link is proof of payment and the payment percentage is quite low post pandemic when pre-pandemic estimates of non-fare payment were 5% but today are closer to 50%.

         Then you have the cost of fare payment officers who usually only issue a warning so don’t recover any of the cost of their employment, and how do you check for fare payment on a crowded bus?

         I think the plan or hope at one point was to eliminate fares. Some believe the cost of fare enforcement equals or exceeds the additional fare income received from fares (although this assumption was based on pre-pandemic non-payment percentages that were much lower). Another advantage of pay as you board is to screen passengers.

         The key is how much operations and maintenance costs are predicated on farebox recovery. With ridership down and inflation up that is already stressed. Ideally Link and Metro would get back to 5% non-payment and pre-pandemic ridership levels, but with ST’s decision to lower its farebox recovery goal from 40% to 15% I don’t think that is likely.

         Does anyone on this blog know the different fare payment percentages from regular pay as you board Metro buses and pay as you leave buses? I can certainly understand how pay as you leave or “proof of payment” makes for faster boarding, if the transit agency can afford it. In some ways it is unfortunate that so many fare payment scofflaws prevent faster transit boarding methods.

      2. Proof of payment typical has lower fare evasion. That was the case in San Fransisco when they implemented proof-of-payment (fare evasion dropped from 9.5 percent to 7.9 percent). It is counter-intuitive, but not when you consider that most drivers don’t challenge most riders if their card doesn’t work. Their job is to drive the bus.

      3. pre-pandemic estimates of non-fare payment were 5% but today are closer to 50%.

         Where do you get that? I’ve never seen anything by Metro about that, and ST tends to lump together people who aren’t costing the agency a dime if they don’t tap (e. g. those under 19) with those that are cheating. To the best of my knowledge, ST has yet to actually tell us how many people are failing to pay. Not failing to tap, but failing to pay (when they should).

      4. Ross Bleakney,

         “Meanwhile, Sound Transit estimated that about 45% of Link riders did not pay with valid fare media as of October 2023. That fare evasion rate is much higher than the agency’s 2.4% estimate prior to the pandemic in 2019.

         “Sound Transit projects that its Link fare evasion rate will drop to 25% by 2029, but the agency anticipates spending considerable sums of money on a new fare compliance program that will require about twice the staffing to implement. Despite calls from a few agency boardmembers, a push to implement fare gates to combat fare evasion seems to have stalled out”.

         Sound Transit Lowers Farebox Recovery Goals, Opens Door to Fare Capping – The Urbanist

         If you have trouble accessing this link Google, “sound transit lowers farebox recovery goal”. I am pretty sure this was a link in an open thread or part of an article on STB and was discussed.

         Whether someone fails to pay rather than failing to tap is irrelevant to farebox recovery. Either way Sound Transit receives no fare for the trip. Intent is irrelevant to farebox revenue. Considering around 95% of riders before the pandemic were able to figure out how to tap on and off and only 55% of riders post pandemic suggests the steep decline in non-fare payment is not due to not knowing how to tap on and off. Furthermore ST uses methods other than just tapping on and off to determine ridership and who should pay a fare but does not.

         Your suggestion that folks who inadvertently fail to “tap” cost the agency nothing is mistaken. Otherwise, everyone could ride free and cost the agency nothing.

         The agency and Link as a whole have a certain cost burden that is supposed to be shared by all riders who are required to pay, and ST assumed that fare payment would cover 40% of operations and maintenance (20% for Metro). If farebox recovery is 15% the options are to raise the O&M revenue someplace else, reduce service, raise fares for those who do pay, or most likely with transit agencies skimp of capital maintenance and replacement (see, MTA).

         I am glad that according to The Urbanist ST plans to take fare enforcement more seriously, although fare ambassadors are not free and the revenue they collect probably does not cover the cost of their employment. My concern is ST has allowed non-fare payment to go on for so long it has become entrenched and will be difficult to reverse, especially with fare ambassadors who have almost no effective penalties for those refusing to pay a fare.

      5. SF Muni has rampant fare evasion with all door boarding and no enforcement, literally no one pays if they don’t have an employer-provided pass. I lived there, everyone felt like a sucker for paying. Way more rampant than Seattle where it’s still very visible.

      6. Whether someone fails to pay rather than failing to tap is irrelevant to farebox recovery. Either way Sound Transit receives no fare for the trip.

         Right, but one is fare evasion, the other isn’t. For example, ST gets paid (by the state) for those under 19, whether they tap or not. Also keep in mind that free fares (for those under 19) didn’t start until the pandemic. Of course this didn’t show up before the pandemic — the policy didn’t exist then!

         Put it another way. Assume that 20% of the riders are under 19, and another 20% are carrying monthly passes. Neither group bothers to tap. If that is the case, then increased enforcement — or fare gates — won’t get ST a dime.

         The inability to separate out those who are evading fares and those who don’t tap is nothing more than propaganda.

         In any event, this thread was started because Sam suggested that fare evasion is higher with proof-of-payment buses instead of regular buses. All evidence shows that he is backwards. Bus drivers can’t enforce fares. They are actively discouraged from doing so (it is against official policy).

      7. “In any event, this thread was started because Sam suggested that fare evasion is higher with proof-of-payment buses instead of regular buses. All evidence shows that he is backwards.”

         I didn’t suggest that at all.

      8. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sNzVcEAmAx7lzGG–Js3eCx3U9tGizPATqy3D4QT10Y/pubhtml?gid=12&single=true

         In general for metro buses gone from 20% in 2004 to 30% in 2014 and collapsed to 7 or 8% after the pandemic.

6. Looking at the map, it looks like the 271/B line will exit on 108th and then backtrack up Northup. Will the 270 be following the same routing?

   1. Yes, I expect so; ELC was not clear.

7. As a big picture post, I think the implications of the strong “hourglass” needs to be discussed more.

   I don’t find it as much of an hourglass but instead more like spokes radiating outward. There is some through routing but not much. Some routes do cross each other at the far ends but many do not. Link will soon go from 2 directions out of Downtown to 3, with planning 2 more for a total of 5 at the end of ST3 — and RapidRide will never approach the exclusive corridor speeds that Link will have.

   There seems to be no “inner loop” or circumferential RapidRide route proposed. There are crosstown routes in North Seattle but they don’t turn to connect to the East Link spoke (at Judkins Park). I understand how Metro wants to upgrade existing routes, but with Link carrying more riders faster through Downtown, a circumferential RapidRide route could be useful — especially with Link service disruptions or crowding.

   If Route 36 and 49 were connected that would start to create a circumferential although Broadway is painfully slow.

   If Metro would send a RapidRide R up 23rd Ave to either UW or to Capitol Hill that’s another circumferential routing.

   The “Metro 8” idea has floated around for awhile. The main obstacle to it being a RapidRide route is the challenge of routing it on Seattle streets.

   So I guess the two big relevant questions from me are:

   1. Should more circumferential RapidRide routing be proposed?
   2. Would it be a new route, or can some of the targeted routes be moved or extended to enable easier circumferential movements?

   1. > If Route 36 and 49 were connected that would start to create a circumferential although Broadway is painfully slow.

      Originally the article I talked about the two circumferential proposed routes in Seattle though I simplified it a bit as the latter wasn’t rapidride. One was the 36+49 as you noted. The other one suggested was the 8 east-west line from lower queen anne via Slu and capitol hill to madison park.

      The two new transfer hubs/points would be at first hill and at capitol hill.

      1. I think missing Judkins Park is generally a service mistake on Metro’s part. The only decently frequent routes today are Routes 7 and 106, which turn to head Downtown, Routes 8 and 48 and maybe Route 4 but it’s still a few blocks of walking.

         I get that Beacon Hill is a transfer point but only 1 Line trans stop there so it doesn’t connect to the 2 Line. Had ST put a station under the 12th Ave bridge (with elevators on the side to get up to 12th Ave) this would not be an issue.

         I’ve mentioned several times in the past that Judkins Park station not only can connect the Eastside but it can also be a fast way to get from North Seattle as the travel time to get there from CID is faster than the time it takes to get to SODO from CID.

         As far as a possible circumferential new route, I would like to see one from Alaska Junction to Beacon Hill to Judkins Peark to UW (replacing Route 48 north of Judkins Park).

         I would also like for RapidRide R to overlay with Route 7 as an express but follow the Route 9X routing up First Hill to Capitol Hill Station.

      2. I would have Rapid Ride R (or perhaps keep the 7 as a local Rainier Ave. route) go through First Hill, Capitol Hill, down Boren to Denny then end up in SLU as the terminus. First Hill to SLU–one of the most dense residential neighborhoods (also some new affordable housing near Yesler) to a major job center–appears to be tricky by bus even if all of the proposed Rapid Ride lines are built. This might also help First hill medical center and SLU commuters riding the 2 line, who could transfer at Judkins Park and avoid the slow roll through the downtown stations.

      3. If we are going to have RapidRide, then the 48 should definitely be RapidRide. Same is true of the 7. Both were candidates for “RapidRide+” status (which was supposed to be better than typical RapidRide. Both connect to Judkins Park.

         The 106 isn’t as clear cut. It is a good route, with a good number of riders. But adding bus lanes on MLK seems like a stretch (given that Link runs on the same street). Overall it doesn’t seem like a RapidRide route, although I wouldn’t mind. The part of the 8 that runs by Jukdins Park seems like an even bigger stretch. I think service along that part of MLK should either be coverage in nature (i. e. infrequent) or eliminated, and just run the 48 more often. If the 48 ran every 7.5 minutes I think infrequent (or non-existent) service along there is a small price to pay.

      4. I would have Rapid Ride R (or perhaps keep the 7 as a local Rainier Ave. route) go through First Hill, Capitol Hill, down Boren to Denny then end up in SLU as the terminus.

         I wouldn’t. The 7 is a core route. Asking riders to transfer to Link (that is probably running less often than 7) at the outskirts of downtown is a bad idea. That is like truncating all the West Seattle buses at SoDo.

         I do like the idea of a Boren bus though, and have for a long time. Sending the 106 that direction would be better. The 106 overlaps Link for much of the way, with transfers that are quite easy. The 7 intersects Link, but the transfers are much worse. Currently the 106 does not go through downtown — it ends at CID. Thus you lose less. Riders could transfer to Link or the 7 (a same-stop transfer). Or they could get off the bus at Boren and walk a little ways to where the 7, 14, and 36 converge (and thus have less waiting).

         The 106 might be too long though. At that point one option is just to make the Boren bus a stand-alone bus (Uptown/SLU to Mount Baker). This is actually better from a usage standpoint. I could see the Boren bus running a lot more often than the 106. The only drawback to that approach is that you are adding even more service on Rainier (north of Mount Baker). I could live with that (especially if we add BAT lanes there) but it isn’t efficient.

         Which brings me back to the 106. Once the Boren bus is added, the 106 could be truncated at Mount Baker. The only drawback with that approach is that it doesn’t connect well with Judkins Park. Having the 106 continue on and turning on 23rd would be ideal, but turning around and laying over north of the station might be challenging.

         There are other options. The 106 and Boren bus could layover at Othello. Riders of the 106 headed downtown would be expected to transfer to Link (to get downtown) or the Boren bus (to get to other places in Rainier Valley or up to First Hill). By pushing the transfer point south you have more one-seat rides to First Hill/Boren while reducing overlap. When Graham Street Station is added, the 106 could turn there and then maybe go to Georgetown (assuming you can layover and turnaround there).

      5. RossB and Al S. on R or 7. Route 7 has a 10-minute headway; Link has an eight-minute headway; it should have a six-minute headway. Link has much better speed, reliability, and capacity. Routes 7 and 36 have a costly and awkward turnaround loop in downtown. The SDOT R line will serve the DSTT, Judkins, Mt. Baker, and Rainier Beach stations. Route 7 or R should remain an electric trolleybus route and remain under the overhead.

         Route 106 was extended to IDS in fall 2016 in an overtly political service change to placate ACRS and the Save the 42 movement. They copied the reductions network; but it had Route 106 serve Yesler Way in the context of routes 14 and 27 deleted (the reductions network was extreme). The South Jackson Street pathway duplicated routes 7, 14, and 36 and degraded their productivity.

         The R line could be Route 49-9 or 48-7 and skip downtown. Route 49-9 seems best; it would also serve the Capitol Hill station, though the McGinn SDOT made Broadway very slow. Link could carry the radial load. These options would still provide the local Rainier service.

         Route 106 could be flipped to 23rd Avenue South and Yesler Way from Rainier Avenue South and South Jackson Street. Yesler Way now only has Route 27, but has activity centers including Yesler Terrace. The revised Route 106 would serve the better side of Judkins and Jackson Square. It would use the reductions network concept.

         Route consolidations usually yield improved frequency and shorter waits. The network would be stronger.

         The 23rd Avenue South entrance of Judkins is easier for pedestrians than Rainier.

      6. I’m not sure truncating RapidRide R at mt baker makes much sense. I do agree in general that out of these routes to south seattle ( 36/60/106/7 ) we should move one of them to a boren or broadway alignment. The 60 has issues since it’s not trolley wire so generally kcm was trying for the 36 instead.

         > Route consolidations usually yield improved frequency and shorter waits. The network would be stronger.

         However, for route 7 it already has high frequency and actually higher than link at sometimes. While mt baker might seem far ish from CID around 2.5 miles rainier avenue in general is still relatively fast for buses to travel that the transfer doesn’t make as much sense versus for people from say westlake to destinations in uw.

         > The R line could be Route 49-9 or 48-7 and skip downtown
         > Route 106 could be flipped to 23rd Avenue South and Yesler Way

         If you did both of these then there would be no bus going on Jackson and Rainier from cid to mt baker then.

         > The revised Route 106 would serve the better side of Judkins and Jackson Square. It would use the reductions network concept.

      7. I think it’s helpful to mention that Routes 7 and 106 currently follow the same route from Mt Baker to CID. Not sending a Route 7 bus downtown only keeps those riders south of Mt Baker from a one-seat ride to Downtown — and those riders still would be riding past both Mt Baker and Judkins Park Link stations on the way as well as a Route 106 stopping at the same stops to get Downtown and CID.

         And Route 7 goes further than Henderson 1/3 to 1/4 of the time. The Prentice segment is important to that neighborhood.

         And Metro used to run lots more 7X and 9X buses on Rainier.

         And there is no direct route from Rainier Ave to First Hill and Harborview, the nearest hospital and emergency room to SE Seattle. Not everyone living in far SE Seattle is headed to Third Avenue.

         There are service hour details and tradeoffs to make — but RapidRide R can either replace Route 7 or merely be added as a new route. This dilemma is difficult for Metro to resolve, which I think is likely why the project has yet to be implemented. Every other part of Seattle has at least one RapidRide route other than SE Seattle (and NE Seattle).

         If the service hours can handle it, I would like to see it be a new overlay route run with battery electric buses in the general 9 + 49 alignment. Even if it can only run every 15 minutes (some other RapidRides only run every 15 minutes), it would add more destinations — and the worst thing it would do is reduce access to the CID from areas like Columbia City south where there are many other path options as well as Route 7 trolleybuses with reduced service frequency. In the other hand, it would add new direct connectivity between Capitol Hill, First Hill, Harborview and Judkins Park.

         Finally, a note that the Rainier Beach Station end point is problematic. The station layout needs to be revisited to be safer. And I hope that buses can physically maneuver through Merton Way and MLK to reverse direction. If not, that is another lingering problem for RapidRide R.

      8. WL: none of the posts suggested that Route 7R be truncated at Mt. Baker; RossB suggested that as an option for Route 106. Route 49-9 would connect the U District and Rainier Beach Link stations via the Capitol Hill, Judkins, and Mt. Baker Link stations.

         A diesel route, such as a consolidation of routes 8 and 48 could use Mt. Baker as a terminal. Routes 8, 14, and 48 do today. It would be good to consider having a route terminate on the west side of Rainier Avenue South to save Link transfers from crossing Rainier.

      9. > WL: none of the posts suggested that Route 7R be truncated at Mt. Baker; RossB suggested that as an option for Route 106. Route 49-9 would connect the U District and Rainier Beach Link stations via the Capitol Hill, Judkins, and Mt. Baker Link stations.

         > The R line could be Route 49-9 or 48-7 and skip downtown

         Sorry I shouldn’t have said truncation but the main point is that with both of your proposals there are no main bus route on the jackson to rainier path anymore.

      10. @EddieW:

          There is 160 feet elevation difference between Routes 8 and 48 north of Pine Street. Seattle transit routing has to be considered in three dimensions. There are plenty of routes around Seattle that look close on a 2D map, but the elevation differences make it important to operate each route. The CD is no different than Queen Anne, First Hill or Fremont.

      11. But anyways if ya’ll are interested perhaps later after the rapidride routes articles I could write a small article about post rapidride in seattle with the proposed circumferential/periphery routes.

          In metro connects 2050, There’s the suggested split of the route 8 into an east-west 8+11 and then a north-south 48. The leftovers of 8 would just head to the kaiser hospital. Honestly while the split is maybe alright the remainder leftovers just seem a bit odd as a route.

          https://platform.remix.com/project/ea35df7d?latlng=47.61946,-122.30327,14.149&layer=hifi&sidebarCollapsed=true

          For route 7, the original original idea in seattle transit master plan (2016) was to have the route 70 and route 7 section from cid to mt baker be combined. Aka there would be 2 main routes from U district to mt baker the 48 and the 70+7.

          The 48 is more complicated with previous split from the 45 (also back in 2016)
          https://www.theurbanist.org/2016/03/29/seattle-bus-restructure-takes-effect-part-1-by-the-numbers/

          A large problem is with the montlake drawbridge, generally KCM doesn’t want to make route 48 longer as it affects the frequency and reliability quite a lot.

      12. Crosstown or periphery routes are not the same as circumferential routes in my definition.

          A circumferential route should meet multiple spokes of faster, high frequency radial services. That means Link — although I’d give half credit to meeting a radial RapidRide route.

          With transfer points at both ends and in the middle, circumferential routes benefit from sustained ridership throughout the line, while crosstown routes empty out towards the ends.

          Circumferential routes offer alternatives in case service gets disrupted Downtown too. It’s a ready-made bus bridge already signed — and Metro could quickly just assign more buses to the route if a bus bridge is needed.

          So when I read different routing ideas from Metro I assess the idea with this lens. Using this lens, Route 8 + 11 is worse than Route 8 today — because at least Route 8 today is a circumferential route (albeit slow and with unreliability) while severing the Judson Park and Mt Baker connectivity From Capitol Hill and SLU would destroy the circumferential function.

      13. I think it’s helpful to mention that Routes 7 and 106 currently follow the same route from Mt Baker to CID. Not sending a Route 7 bus downtown only keeps those riders south of Mt Baker from a one-seat ride to Downtown — and those riders still would be riding past both Mt Baker and Judkins Park Link stations on the way as well as a Route 106 stopping at the same stops to get Downtown and CID.

          Right, but it makes sense to go the other way around (and have 106 riders transfer to the 7) for several reasons:

          1) The only Link connections for the 7 are Mount Baker and Judkins Park. Neither are very good. In contrast, the 106 crosses path with surface Link stations — this makes it a very easy walk.

          2) Some of the potential transfers for the 106 (e. g. Rainier Beach, Othello) are quite a ways from downtown. Since Link is fast, riders lose less with the transfer. Maybe you spend five minutes waiting, but the train is five minutes faster. That is less likely to happen the closer you are to downtown (which are the only options with the 7).

          4) The 7 is getting BAT lanes (as we speak). It is unlikely that the 106 will. Again, this makes transferring to Link more appealing for 106 riders than 7 riders.

          5) The 7 is more frequent than the 106. This means that if you transfer to the 7 there is less waiting than transferring to the 106.

          6) The 106 currently ends at CID. It doesn’t go to the heart of downtown. Thus if you moved the 106 you would hurt fewer existing riders.

          The only drawback to sending the 106 to First Hill is that the route could be too long. That can be mitigated any number of ways (as I suggested).

      14. A circumferential route should meet multiple spokes of faster, high frequency radial services.

          Right. A classic example is the Ringbahn in Berlin. It forms the famous “dog head” in the U-Bahn. The problem is, it is very difficult to build something similar in Seattle. The reason the RapidRide buses look like an hourglass is because the city is an hourglass. Draw a three mile loop around 3rd & Union (more or less the center of downtown). A lot of it is in the water. Both Puget Sound and Lake Washington. Much of it is industrial (Duwamish/Sodo).

          Furthermore, we are also talking about buses. A Metro 8 subway offers a lot more than the Metro 8 from a system standpoint. For example, imagine you are going from the East Side to 15th & Thomas (in a couple years). When do you exit Link to catch the 8? Not at Judkins Park — that would be silly. You ride the train through downtown and out the other end to Capitol Hill. Same is true if you rode Link from SeaTac. The same is true in reverse. Let’s say I’m heading from Northgate to Garfield High. I think the best option is to catch the train towards the East Side, but get off at Judkins Park and catch the 48 heading north. Meanwhile, for destinations like Uptown or Hillman City it would be silly to get off the train early. (In contrast, if there was a “Metro 8 subway” then it might make sense to get off the train early. But there isn’t.)

          Meanwhile, the RapidRide G will run right to the point where there would be a split (which means the turn doesn’t help). From a system standpoint you don’t gain much by having the 8 turn. You would be better off splitting the buses and running them more often.

          That doesn’t mean there aren’t people who “round the horn” with the 8. But doing that essentially ignores Link as well as RapidRide G, which means that it contradicts one of the key elements you mentioned.

      15. WL
          In context of several Link stations and routes 14 and 36, is a radial route on Rainier Avenue South critical? The distance between Judkins and South Jackson Street is about 3/4 mile. What if the route consolidation provided shorter waits?
          Al. S
          Route 49-9 would directly connect Rainier and First Hill.
          Yes, there is steepness between MLK and 23rd Avenue. The G Line is about to provide six-minute headway service on the steepest part; Madison had a cable car. Routes 2, 3, 4, 14, and 27 also serve the area. 23rd Avenue is by far the best corridor and the network would benefit if routes 8 and 48 were consolidated and shorter waits provided. 23rd Avenue has the urban village, the former streetcar line, and the most ridership.

          Route 8.11 made sense at the time of U Link, but not after the G Line. The G Line is radial. it serves between Madison Valley and downtown via First Hill. It misses the Capitol Hill station. It goes atop the First Hill station that ST dropped.

          Link integration could lead to many radial corridors losing their direct trips to/from downtown; that was the point of the save the 42 campaign. Consider the former DSTT routes 41, 71, 72, 7, 74, and 255.

      16. There is 160 feet elevation difference between Routes 8 and 48 north of Pine Street.

          Right, and this is also the biggest transit hole (if we got rid of that part of the 8). But it is still a pretty small hole. You can walk north to Madison or south to Union (on fairly level streets). You could even walk down the hill to 34th (if you are at or south of Denny). The main reason you would walk up the hill is if you want to go the UW, and losing the 8 doesn’t change that.

          What you lose is the same thing everyone else would lose — the one seat “round the horn” to Thomas/John/Denny from MLK. No one likes to transfer, but transfers are inevitable. Building a system where buses run frequently is key to mitigating the transfer penalty. If that means losing a bit of coverage, and trading some one-seat rides for others, so be it.

      17. @ Ross:

          You do realize that you condemned a circumferential Route 8 because it’s a BUS while saying that RapidRide G is worthy of a different, massive restructure though it’s a BUS?

          The areas served by Route 8 are more than John and Broadway. There are apartment buildings along the entire route, and a hospital, four supermarkets and several other destinations between Capitol Hill and Judkins Park. It’s not much different than much of Seattle. It’s not suburbia.

          And while Route 8 wrestles with terrible traffic in SLU, the segment east and south of Broadway only gets modest congestion. It could easily be upgraded to RapidRide status in a design like Delridge has with RapidRide H.

          Fortunately, Route 8 is already planned to be a circumferential route after the adopted RaphdRide G restructure. It will connect with both 1 line and 2 Line in two places each, as well as multiple RapidRide lines. So we will see in 2026 whether or not a circumferential route is useful or not.

      18. “Route 8.11 made sense at the time of U Link, but not after the G Line.”

          What would serve Madison Park then? Would the 11 continue long-term?

          I’ve said many times that I find the 11 the most useful east-west route across Capitol Hill and Madison Valley because it serves almost all the activity areas and attractions: Pike Place Market, downtown transfers, retail district, Pike-Pine, Cal Anderson Park, top of the hill (Trader Joe’s), Madison Valley, arboretum, Madison Park. Even if your destination is a few blocks north or south of it on Broadway or 15th, it gets rather close. So I would like the 11 to be the most frequent east-west route in the area. And not moved to Olive/John.

      19. You do realize that you condemned a circumferential Route 8 because it’s a BUS while saying that RapidRide G is worthy of a different, massive restructure though it’s a BUS?

          Yes, because one is circumferential, while the other is linear. It is basic geometry. Shortest distance between two points is a line. This means the fastest possible connection between the two points is via a straight line. Circumferential routes are generally not as essential as linear routes because many trips simply don’t make sense. If your trip involves a half-circle, you are taking the slow way. But circumferential routes are common with subways because:

          1) They can ignore the street grid.
          2) Subways are by they very nature fast.
          3) They take advantage of the fast linear routes that form a radial network.

          In other words, at some point you build out the linear, radial routes and it makes sense to build circumferential routes. Of course it is just about as common to just build a few crossing lines, creating a grid of sorts. Most subway systems don’t form a perfect pattern — they are way too complicated.

          In any event, if a circumferential route is slow, then you lose many of the advantages of the pattern. Throw in the fact that our geography is very limiting (preventing a full circle) and the advantages of this bus get even worse. See the examples I mentioned. The key being that those trips make sense via a Metro 8 subway, but don’t make sense via the existing Metro 8 (or even a Metro 8 that avoided congestion). If you are at CHS and want to get to the U-District Station, the shortest trip is via the 49. It is basically a straight shot. But Link is much, much faster. No one minds the fact that it “detours” because the speed of the train more than makes up for it.

      20. “Circumferential routes are generally not as essential as linear routes because many trips simply don’t make sense”

          Circumferential routes are for short trips perpendicular to the radial routes. That’s how the ring lines of the world are used, or the proposed Ashland Avenue BRT in Chicago. In Seattle an example is route 48, which connects Mt Baker to the U-District faster than taking the radial routes to downtown and back. (Although with Link’s speed, it can more than make up for that. But it won’t when the Spine is broken in ST3.)

          There used to be full circumferal routes like the 360 express (Burien, Renton, Bellevue, Bothell, Shoreline P&R) or 75 (U-District, Sand Point, Lake City, Northgate, Holman Road, 24th Ave NW, Ballard). Obviously they weren’t good for doing a half circle or three-quarters circle, but they were good for doing a quarter circle or less.

   2. Al S. Yes, pose big picture questions.
      If RR, should R Line capital improve non-radial routes and leave the radial market to Link? Candidates include routes 9-49 and 48-7 (dependent on 23rd Avenue overhead?).
      Why RR, since is so delayed and costly; could the network be improve more if the hours, capital, and staff time used differently.

8. How are these candidates identified? Route 8 is insanely unreliable and one of Metro’s most productive routes so I’m quite surprised to not see any segments of it on the map.

   1. The precedents were:

      * 2006: The Transit Now levy that created RapidRide A-F between 2010 and 2014.

      * 2012: Seattle’s transit master plan with a half-dozen transit priority corridors.

      * 2012-2016: Other cities’ transit master plans in the run-up to ST3.

      * 2015: Move Seattle levy with a half-dozen RapidRide lines. The G, J, and R were on it, and the 44, 48, and 62. The H, 8-Madison Park, and 40 may have been on it; I don’t quite remember.

      * 2016: Metro Connects (Metro’s long-range plan for the ST2 and ST3 eras), based partly on the cities’ plans.

      * Late 2010s: Seattle admits its Move Seattle budget was unrealistic, and downgrades the 44, 48, and 62 to less-than-RapidRide improvements, and the 40 and 8-Madison Park may have gone down with them. It’s just a question of priorities: the G, H, J, and R were the city’s highest priority with its limited budget.

      * 2020: The pandemic caused all local governments to value equity more highly. The H and R were beneficiaries of that.

      * 2024: The RapidRide prioritization report reevaluated the candidate projects still in Metro Connects, and ranked them in the three tiers above, based on equity and environmental factors. (What about ridership? That doesn’t seem to be mentioned.) The 8-Madison Park or any other form of the 8 was already downgraded. SDOT is pursuing less-than-RapidRide improvements on Denny, especially near the I-5 bottleneck, and an overhaul of Harrison Street in Uptown that the 8 or other future east-west routes may use. (Some of the routes will use it; whether the 8 is one of them is less clear. The other routes don’t exist yet, which is why you don’t know what they are. Metro Connects has concepts like West Queen Anne to 23rd & Aloha to Garfield High School, and Magnolia to same.)

      STB commentators sometimes refer to a “Metro 8 Line”. That’s a rail concept serving roughly the 8 corridor. Variations include east (Uptown, Capitol Hill Station, Garfield HS) or southeast (Uptown, Swedish hospital, Garfield HS). Obviously it can’t serve both Capitol Hill and First Hill without zigzagging, so different people choose one or the other. This is only an unofficial concept in the comments section; neither ST nor Seattle has acknowledged it as something they might consider funding.

   2. Route 8 is insanely unreliable and one of Metro’s most productive routes so I’m quite surprised to not see any segments of it on the map.

      Agreed. The choices seem rather arbitrary. I know they like to plug in numbers, but I think their methodology is flawed. For example they like to look at equity. Fair enough. But do they look at the the total number of people or percentages? The only one that matters is the former. For example, consider two neighborhoods:

      1) 100 residents with 50 of them under the poverty line.
      2) 1000 residents, with 200 under the poverty line.

      Someone like HUD likes to focus on percentages — they assume the first neighborhood has slums which should be dealt with. But when it comes to transit you want to provide as much as service to low income people as possible, which means you focus on the latter. What does King County do? Who knows? But it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if their focus is on the wrong thing.

      They also seem to ignore ridership per service hour or how much difference an improvement would make. Some streets have a lot more congestion than others. Some buses carry a lot more riders (despite the congestion) than others. It shouldn’t be hard to look at areas that have a lot of congestion but a lot of riders — even a lot of low income riders — and figure out where to do the most good. This might not mean entire routes — just corridors (e. g. Denny for the 8).

      There appears to be very little of that. A methodology that somehow misses the 8 is obviously flawed.

   3. I can’t speak for Metro, but I have a hunch that it’s just too hard to improve bus speed and reliability significantly on Route 8.

      Also, I’m not convinced that Metro is happy with a final bus restructure once RapidRide G and East Link’s Judkins Park (with a Route 8 path change) opens. They wanted to change more things when U-Link opened in 2016 but the communities pushed back at making major changes then — partly out of fear of change

      Metro has its hands full with implementing widespread restructures all over King County for the next two years. The opening of Link is transformational to the bus network. I even think it may be useful to wait on finalizing some RapidRide upgrades proposed already until Link opens and the new bus routings have been operating for at least a year.

      And the East Link delay across Lake Washington throws the timing off at many levels.

      1. Al, you’re talking today about the route 8 being unreliable, but does this sound familiar? “… the RapidRide A should be extended. From Federal Way, it could extend to Kitts Corner or Great Mall or Downtown Auburn.”

      2. @ Sam:

         Look here at Appendix D:

         https://cdn.kingcounty.gov/-/media/king-county/depts/metro/documents/about/data-and-reports/2023/system-evaluation.pdf?rev=f6dfbff3c8c241789d8ea41af786dc60&hash=088EBDE82881D6379C72207DC78904D4

         It’s pretty clear that Route 8 is notably unreliable while RapidRide A is about average.

         It’s pretty easy to fact check this accusation.

      3. Al, would extending the A Line to downtown Auburn increase the likelihood that the route would become more unreliable?

      4. @Sam:

         The same table reports that Route 181 between Auburn and Federal Way is well below the reliability target for Weekdays and Saturdays (13% off). There isn’t a single South King Route in the 100 numbering that does better!

         Just look at the data!

      5. “It’s pretty easy to fact check this accusation.”

         That never stopped Sam before. He’s still T1, Troll Number One.

      6. Why would I look at data if I want to know if you think that extending the A Line to downtown Auburn would increase the likelihood that the route would become more unreliable? I’m asking you your opinion. Even though you won’t answer the question directly, you seem to be saying that no, you don’t think that it would make the A Line route more unreliable?

      7. The 8 has specific severe bottlenecks on Denny Way. The A has transit-priority lanes on a more wide-open street, and has not been known for delays. It’s not particularly fast because it has so many stops, but that’s the RapidRide standard: Link and the 574 are the limited-stop overlays.

         Tukwila asked Metro to extend the A on the north end to the future BAR station, and Metro is considering extending it further to Rainier Beach. Most of that area is pretty wide-open so I don’t expect additional delays. An exception may be East Marginal Way and the Boeing Access Road at rush hour. But we also don’t know what street improvements might be done to mitigate this.

         Extending the south end of the A to Auburn, first, is anyone besides Sam asking for this? Is there a demand for a one-seat ride from Auburn to northern Federal Way? What is there in northern Federal Way to go to? Or what is there in Auburn that people in northern Federal Way are so hot to get to? I don’t see demand coming from Des Moines: that’s so far away that a transfer at Federal Way TC would be a smaller part of the total trip, and there’s an option to take Link or the 578’s successor for half the trip, which you wouldn’t get with a one-seat ride on the A.

         Second, what is congestion like between Federal Way TC and Auburn Station? I have no idea, but I haven’t heard that it’s a particular bottleneck.

         The A wouldn’t be extended to just the Great Mall (partway to downtown Auburn). That would be stopping just short of a major destination and transfer point. Metro just rejected a RapidRide 150 alternative terminating in SODO because of that. As for Kitts Corner, I’ve never heard of it and don’t know where it is, so I can’t comment on that. If it’s east of Green River College, that might be a potential extension of RapidRide 181 (not the A).

      8. Here’s a direct answer: no, I don’t think extending the A to downtown Auburn would deteriorate reliability significantly. But I don’t know if there’s more east-west congestion than I realize, so somebody familiar with Auburn would have to answer that.

         I also think the conceptual notion of extending the A like that is ridiculous, which is what makes it sound like a troll. One could equally extend any route anywhere. Since we’re talking about the 8, what about extending the western end to Greenlake?

      9. That’s correct, Sam. I don’t think it would significantly hurt reliability.

         Plus one objective of the RapidRide program is to address the reliability of the route to make it better. So even if it did, the RapidRide engineering and design details should mitigate it.

      10. @Mike:

          Kitts Corner is a corner near the South Federal Way retail district. It’s about 1.5 miles south of Federal Way Link station. Locals sometimes use the term for the general area from what I’ve read.

          It’s on Google Maps.

      11. Extending the A to Auburn doesn’t get you much. That is the problem. There is very little between Auburn and Federal Way. Thus I assume you are talking about an express. Downtown Auburn is not a major destination. Meanwhile, consider the big picture. Pretty soon Link will be extended to Federal Way. At that point it will connect to the major destinations on the A (Highline College and SeaTac). When Link gets to Federal Way, it is quite likely that ST will run express buses from Auburn to Federal Way.

          This means you are creating redundant service that adds very little. Someone trying to get from Auburn to Highline might prefer the A over the transfer to Link. But with decent frequency on Link (every ten minutes) and much faster travel, you really aren’t adding much. I’m sure there are some trips that would benefit, but only a handful. It just isn’t worth the service hours.

          You could make the argument that by doing this Metro saves ST from running extra buses, but that is backwards. ST is loaded; Metro is not.

      12. Taking Al. S out of it, my overall point was, I get tired of seeing commenters on one day suggest this or that route be extended. Some examples I’ve read here are: Extend the A Line to downtown Auburn. Extend the B Line to South Bellevue, Mercer Island, or Factoria. Extend the H Line to SeaTac. Extend the D Line to the Northgate TC. But then on another day, they are complaining about route reliability, wondering what can be done to make routes more reliable. All I was doing was calling that disconnect out a little.

          And I realize route reliability isn’t always about route length, but it often is, due to the snowball effect.

      13. “Extend the A Line to downtown Auburn.”

          You were reading yourself.

          “Extend the B Line to South Bellevue,”

          That’s Metro’s idea.

          “[Extend the B to] Mercer Island, or Factoria.”

          I haven’t heard of either of those.

          “Extend the H Line to SeaTac.”

          A sensible idea of the comments section.

          “Extend the D Line to the Northgate TC.”

          That goes back to the creation of the D. Many people wanted to extend it to Northgate. Metro said it couldn’t fit into the RapidRide D capital budget. The issue was both street improvements and more red buses.

          “But then on another day, they are complaining about route reliability, wondering what can be done to make routes more reliable.”

          Sorry if the comments section makes your head spin. I’ve found sleep the most effective in clearing head-spinning or a headache.

          Extensions and reliability are two different issues. Sometimes an extension would cause minimal delay; other times it would cause a lot of delay. In your examples with the B and H, I’d say they’d cause minimal delay and shouldn’t be a barrier to considering them.

          For the D-Northgate I’d worry about congestion at the I-5 entrance. But that would affect the 40 too (or cause it to be rerouted in a U shape via Meridian/College Way, which is also an impact). But one route or the other has to go to Northgate, so which one will it be?

          For the A-Auburn I’d guess minimal delay, but as I said I don’t have much experience with that segment.

   4. They are still moving forward with the harrison street transitway

      https://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs/current-projects/harrison-mercer-transit-access

      Perhaps they don’t move route 8 — but I don’t really see what other route they’d move and spending all this money on harrison street as a transitway they’ll move at least one route over to using it.

      1. In the mid 2010s Metro suggested moving the 8 and other future routes to Harrison. In the 2020s it hedged a bit and said it would put some routes there, but maybe not the 8. I don’t think that was a permanent decision against the 8, just musing that it might be worth distributing the routes to both streets, and the 8 may be one distributed to Denny. I can’t fathom why Metro wouldn’t want to consolidate routes on one street for all possible transfers, or why it would hesitate to get the 8 out of Denny Way congestion when that’s the primary public demand. It may have to do with coverage in Belltown. To get from the Western Avenue highrises or the Sculpture Park to a route east, you have to walk several blocks uphill to the 8 at 5th & Denny, and one wouldn’t want to walk a few blocks further. If you’re going downtown or south you have a few routes slightly closer on 1st, but most of them are still on 3rd.

      2. The project map is even more curious. The corridor starts at Queen Anne & Mercer and goes east on Mercer, south on 5th, east on Harrison, north on Fairview, and east on Republican to Eastlake Avenue, next to a future layover facility. The 8 is shown as remaining on its current alignment, and no routes are shown in the new corridor.

         If the 8 used the entire length of the corridor, it would have to backtrack a bit to Denny (where REI is) and make a sharp left turn to the Denny viaduct across the freeway, in all the I-5 traffic. (That’s what we do in a car to get from I-5 to Capitol Hill.) Westbound it would have to make an even sharper right turn from Denny to Eastlake, and I don’t know if that’s even allowed.

         Metro Connects has several route concepts that would use the corridor.

         1061 (RapidRide candidate): the 8’s successor, from 15th & Nickerson to Madison Park. That’s not on the RapidRide prioritization list.

         3028: 2N successor, from 6th W & Raye to Queen Anne & Mercer, then along “the transitway” to Eastlake, north and across the Lakeview Blvd bridge, to Roy Street and East Aloha Street north of the Broadway business district to 23rd, then south on 23rd to Madison. This would be a 30-minute coverage route. An earlier version would have gone further to Garfield High School, and a second route from Magnolia would have doubled up on it, providing 15-minute combined service from QA & Mercer to Garfield HS. The second route was dropped, presumably due to budget limitations and low ridership.

         2614: A 102 extension. It would stay on I-5 to Madison/Seneca street (not serving SODO or lower downtown), and then continue north on 5th/6th Avenues, Westake Avenue, then west on “the transitway”, and north to Smith Cove/Expedia. (This is not the 101’s successor (1075), which is truncated at Othello Station, and extended northeast to the Renton Highlands (yaay!!!).) So it must be the 102’s successor, and thus it may be peak-only.

         I don’t see any other route concepts in “the transitway”.

      3. @Mike

         I can’t find it at the moment but previous powerpoints about the harrison street transitway showed the route 8 being moved the harrison street rather than denny way on the map.

         It’s also in the faq and in the psrc project proposals about shifting it.

         psrc proposal
         “””
         “For King County Metro Route 8, which currently operates on Denny Way between Fairview Ave N and Queen Anne Ave N, passengers experience an average of 825 hours of delay per weekday,” the project application notes. “By converting Harrison St into a roadway that can support transit, there will be an additional east-west corridor to improve transit reliability.”
         “””

         FAQ:
         “””
         > Will Route 8 be moved to Harrison?

         Metro and SDOT have made substantial investments to improve Route 8 reliability in the last five years and Metro remains committed to providing bus service on Denny Way. Metro’s long range plan also identifies bus service on both Denny Way and the Harrison/Mercer Street corridor.

         Shifting Route 8 to the Harrison and Mercer corridor is only one of several potential options to utilize an additional east-west pathway for buses through South Lake Union and Uptown. Before the corridor is ready for service in 2028, Metro will evaluate different service options to determine what routes will operate in the new corridor. This service plan will be informed by a community engagement process, which has not yet begun, as well as availability of service
         funding.

         > Why is SDOT doing a transit project on Harrison St and not on Denny Way?
         This Harrison project was identified for study in alignment within the METRO CONNECTS long range transit plan. The project also aligns with the newly-created Eastlake Layover Facility and supports critical connections to North and South King County Metro services and Sound Transit’s proposed Link light rail stations. SDOT has made recent improvements on Denny Way to support transit movements, and there are continued plans within the Seatle Transportation Plan (STP) to make further improvements, as well.
         “””

         (2023)
         https://www.seattle.gov/documents/departments/sdot/transitprogram/harrisonmercer/harrison%20q&a.pdf

         Perhaps they won’t end up moving it there, but all documents and proposals are moving forward with the assumption of moving route 8 there.

      4. > If the 8 used the entire length of the corridor, it would have to backtrack a bit to Denny (where REI is) and make a sharp left turn to the Denny viaduct across the freeway, in all the I-5 traffic. (That’s what we do in a car to get from I-5 to Capitol Hill.) Westbound it would have to make an even sharper right turn from Denny to Eastlake, and I don’t know if that’s even allowed.

         It wouldn’t go all the way to Eastlake for normal routes, that’s just for layovers.

         It’d be on mercer, then harrison street, and then down south on fairview then head east on denny way.

         You can see the route on as “1061 RRC”

         https://platform.remix.com/project/ea35df7d?latlng=47.62479,-122.33017,13.347&layer=hifi&sidebarCollapsed=true

      5. Moving the 8 creates other problems. From the east, the soonest you can turn is Minor, although realistically we are talking about Fairview. Then you go less than a kilometer and run into the Seattle Center. What then? You can’t go through the center (not on Harrison). So you are headed back to Denny. This means you have three extra turns and are back on a congested road. Or maybe you go north. This means you have bypassed an area (Belltown) where a lot of your riders come from. Mercer/Roy has density, but not like Belltown. So you’ve reduced ridership while adding a bunch of turns. Some of the route has BAT lanes, but other parts don’t. That is just not a good idea.

         There are alternatives for the corridor. The Harrison/Mercer/Roy option makes a lot of sense if we add a Boren bus. That will require a lot of BAT lane work, but the results would be outstanding. It would complement the 8 and be a similar route, covering the “outer ring” of greater downtown (SLU, First Hill). It would be like this: https://maps.app.goo.gl/o1YqT1ZQdsHeYfcd8 and then either go to Rainier Valley or Beacon Hill. Although not entirely a straight shot, it would be pretty close. It would make only three turns, while going the same basic direction (northwest/southeast) the whole time.

         Of course that is long term. Neither Metro nor Seattle has money for that now. In the short run you could do an extension. This would still cost money, but not as much. For example the 32 could be extended along Mercer and Harrison to the layover facility on Eastlake. Or a bus from the south end (e. g. 101) could be extended north up Third, then follow the 3/4 to Fifth where it would take a right on Harrison and end at Eastlake again. A (probably) revenue neutral approach would be to send the 29 there (instead of downtown) after it gets restored.

         It looks to me like some of the plans are designed for the short term, but much of it is designed for the very long term (notice it mentions the station at South Lake Union). Some of the transit improvements (on Fifth) would be welcome right away (they would make 3/4 faster) but a lot of it is designed to improve the pedestrian experience (which means it doesn’t need any buses).

      6. Why is SDOT doing a transit project on Harrison St and not on Denny Way?

         They were basically “gifted” Harrison with the SR 99 tunnel. Before the tunnel, Aurora extended north to Harrison. This meant that you could go across Harrison, Thomas or John. If you were in a car you could turn onto Aurora, but that was it (https://maps.app.goo.gl/YFpLcvgQwgPGYb2F6). SDOT wanted to take advantage of the street opening up. Unlike a lot of changes, there is no loss for drivers (they could never drive across). Basically John was chosen for cars, Thomas for bikes, and Harrison for buses. But they were never really sure how to leverage the existing transit right-of-way. That was always an open question.

         Sending the 8 there is a terrible idea. They just need to add BAT lanes on Denny. By all means a second route (or part of a route) would be great on Mercer (or better yet, Roy). Doglegging to Harrison makes sense with such a route (for a number of reasons). But good lord don’t abandon the extremely high density Denny pathway. That would be like parking the buses outside downtown and saying “sorry, traffic is really bad — we can’t get any closer” instead of building the Third Avenue busway (and BAT lanes on Second, Fourth, Fifth, etc.). Just take a lane.

      7. “It’d be on mercer, then harrison street, and then down south on fairview then head east on denny way.”

         Then why not improve Fairview as a T? Oh, because RapidRide J will improve Fairview.

      8. “You can see the route on as “1061 RRC”

         Yes, I referred to that one in the three concepts I listed. The problem is, we don’t know how committed Metro is to those routes anymore. It missed the opportunity to do more of them in the G restructure, Northgate restructure, Lynnwood restructure, and East Link restructure. That’s four restructures in a row now where it backed away from Metro Connects concepts.

         I asked the G team directly why the 8-Madison Park, 2-Pine, Broadway north-south route, and 106-Boren weren’t in the restructure, and they gave a non-answer. “Metro is not advancing them now. It might in the future.” Or it might not. When? What’s it waiting for? How strongly does Metro want these concepts? Has it gotten doubts about them since 2020? Or is it just getting more timid again about restructures in general? In that case we can’t count on anything in Metro Connects. There’s just this unexplained discrepency between Metro Connects and the concrete restructures, and we don’t know how long it will last or whether it’s permanent, or whether we can hope for anything in Metro Connects.

      9. You can see the route on as “1061 RRC”

         https://platform.remix.com/project/ea35df7d?latlng=47.62479,-122.33017,13.347&layer=hifi&sidebarCollapsed=true

         Yeah, they also have a bus on Denny (the 1074). Nice idea in general, but they have it backwards (that is what happens when you put together a map in a couple days). The 8 should remain with the same routing (staying on Denny the whole way). The Boren bus should go to Harrison/Mercer (or as I suggested, Harrison/Roy). By going that way you avoid turns and keep the routes basically going the same direction the whole time. Notice that the 1061 and 1074 don’t cross (which would be the normal approach) but seemingly bounce off each other (which means lots of time making turns). This is an obvious anti-pattern that is also obvious to fix (have them cross).

      10. There’s just this unexplained discrepancy between Metro Connects and the concrete restructures, and we don’t know how long it will last or whether it’s permanent, or whether we can hope for anything in Metro Connects.

          My understanding (from people who actually work in the planning department of Metro) is that the specific routing of Metro Connects is not to be taken seriously. The planners ignore it, and will always ignore it. The routes were basically thrown together in a hurry. Thus you have a RapidRide candidate that somehow ends right before crossing the Ballard Bridge. Huh? That makes no sense.

          It is symbolic. It runs on Harrison (not Thomas or John) but it isn’t a real proposal.

          In many ways this is a shame. There are a lot of good ideas in there that should be taken seriously. Sometimes that means copying a route idea, sometimes it means just borrowing part of the idea.

      11. If we can’t count on the Metro Connects network, and there’s no other Metro-endorsed long-range plan, it means we can’t count on anything beyond the current restructures and the RapidRide prioritization. The RapidRide prioritization tells us about the RapidRide lines, but it doesn’t say anything about the routes around them. If you’re not lucky enough to live near a Link station or a RapidRide station or you’re not going to a Link or RapidRide station, what kind of bus service will you have? Will it be better than the your current transit options? The same? Worse? Is it OK to move there or take a job there? You don’t know, because you don’t know what the network will be like in ten or twenty or thirty years.

      12. > It is symbolic. It runs on Harrison (not Thomas or John) but it isn’t a real proposal.

          Ross they can never officially say they are committing to a route before community feedback.

          But anyways moving route 8 to Harrison is one of the clearest things king county metro is trying to do. They’ve submitted federal funding to do so and emphasized it so much that people started asking if it is “guaranteed” route 8 is moving there

      13. @Mike Orr,

          “ Is it OK to move there or take a job there? You don’t know, because you don’t know what the network will be like in ten or twenty or thirty years.”

          It’s the nature of bus transit. Bus routes are ephemeral. They change, they move, they get deleted. Anyone who moves next to a specific bus route and expects it to be there forever is fooling themselves.

          And RapidRide isn’t immune from this. Now that Metro is planning to delete RR B service to the Overlake P&R and to the Overlake Village Link station you can bet there are some riders who will be inconvenienced by that too.

          I know people who are being forced to move by the deletion of Metro route 20. When they complained to Metro they were basically just told to go pound sand. No recourse.

          It’s the nature of the beast. Just keep moving.

      14. it means we can’t count on anything beyond the current restructures and the RapidRide prioritization

          Yes, that is pretty much it. I can give you numerous examples of this, not limited to lines hastily scribbled on a map. For example the RapidRide+ program (https://seattletransitblog.com/2015/12/21/rapidride-the-corridors/). This was an addendum to the Seattle Transit Plan. Obviously this has been studied in great detail. They have cost estimates of the work, as well as estimates on how much time each change will be save. Many of these projects were implemented as described. Others lacked the money, but they still did what they could. Clearly this is the direction we are headed, right? Wrong. It calls for truncating the 7 at Mount Baker and extending the 48 to replace it. Has anyone seriously considered it? I doubt it. My guess is this will never happen.

          Cities change. They are constantly evolving. This is why — whenever possible — transit should as well. Rail is more permanent, but it too can change. It is quite possible that the streetcars are eventually removed. This has been the case all over the world (and not just in the US). Major metro systems tend to be more permanent, but very poorly performing lines can be cancelled. Obviously they can be altered or eliminated after initial plans or even after funding has been approved. Seattle voters approved a First Hill Station and it was never built. So much for those plans. This is not unique. Various subway expansions around the world have been cancelled after they ran into problems. We voted for the monorail three times. Some of the land was bought and they were ready to go. It didn’t happen. Even systems that are built are subject to degradation. You might expect the trains to your burg to run every ten minutes but they run every half hour. Again, this is rail. Rail is way more static than bus service.

          But flexibility is a good thing. It is one of the fundamental advantages of buses. Rail can carry more people, but it is much easier to move the buses around. Rail is “measure twice, cut once” (and clearly we made some mistakes with the measurements). But with buses you can easily correct the mistakes. Just as importantly, transit can adapt to changes in the city. Places like South Lake Union have a lot more bus service than they used to because they have a lot more people than they used to. The very idea that spawned this thread — bus service on Harrison — is the result of something that could easily be considered permanent (Aurora). Transit can not only adapt to the city, but adapt to the priorities of the agency (e. g. ridership versus coverage). One of the focuses of the last few years has been “equity”. Not only is it likely that the definition of this will change, but so too will the “equity score” of neighborhoods.

          It is worth noting that Seattle does not have very many obvious choices when it comes to a transit network. We don’t have a straightforward street grid. Link has very few stations, which creates its own set of challenges. For example consider the 43. Should we get rid of it, because it lacks “grid integrity”? Or should we have it replace that part of the 48, since it connects to Link. These are no easy answers, and they set off a cascade of similar questions. If Link had a station at 23rd & Madison though, it wouldn’t be an issue. The 43 would have been gone a long time ago, and the 48 would run more often (and carry a lot more people).

          But again, it isn’t just Link. It is also the geography. Part of the reason the long range plans don’t carry much weight is that there is no obvious network, even if we accept certain guidelines (e. g. an “everywhere to everywhere” approach, funnel riders to Link for longer trips, etc.). Even if we all agree on that (and ridership/coverage rations, and how much weight to put on “equity rankings”, etc.) and we lived in a city that doesn’t change it isn’t clear we would come up with an obvious network. In contrast, Vancouver was able to build an “almost perfect grid” because it was obvious once they built SkyTrain (and added enough stops). They just have a much easier street grid to work with.

          The debates over the bus network in this city will consist of long-term themes (ridership/coverage, equity, grids) and short term arguments (Capitol Hill restructure). That is just the way it is here.

      15. But anyways moving route 8 to Harrison is one of the clearest things king county metro is trying to do.

          Citation please! Seriously, the documentation you have shared (which I very much appreciate) suggests the opposite. Is there something else you are looking at?

          It is funny that you have gone from “I don’t really see what other route they’d move” to “moving route 8 to Harrison is one of the clearest things king county metro is trying to do”. From the SDOT document:

          Metro remains committed to providing bus service on Denny Way. Metro’s long-range plan also identifies bus service on both Denny Way and the Harrison/Mercer Street corridor. … Shifting Route 8 to the Harrison and Mercer corridor is only one of several potential options. we’re not yet sure how many buses will operate along the Harrison/Mercer Transit corridor.

          That looks like the opposite of “it is clear that Metro moves the 8”? Moving the 8 would require sending some other bus on Denny, which involves extra churn. That seems pointless.

          Why assume they are going to move a route in the first place? Why not run a new route? RapidRide involved a major investment on Madison, where the 2, 11 and 12 run. But it is a brand new route. It isn’t “moving the 12” or some other route (all those routes remain). I see some similarities with RapidRide G and a route from Uptown to Eastlake (via Mercer/Harrison). Both routes are fairly short, but would still get a lot of riders. It is short enough to have a live loop, which has its advantages. Both are very urban areas. The RapidRide G involved federal funding and this could too.

          I think there are differences though. It is pretty easy to argue that the G should end where it ends. In contrast, this new route really should go to First Hill (via Fairview and Boren) at least to Jackson. The other alternative (which isn’t as good) is to go to Eastlake and then up and and over the freeway via Lakeview and Belmont. At that point it could keep going (on Aloha) or head south on Broadway (ending close to the station or Cherry Hill).

          The point is, there are a lot of different options, some of which involve moving (or extending) another route, some involving a completely new route. I don’t see moving the 8 as the best option, nor the one that is inevitable.

      16. “It calls for truncating the 7 at Mount Baker and extending the 48 to replace it. Has anyone seriously considered it? I doubt it.”

          Yes, it was in Metro Connects in 2016-2018 at least and we had an article about it.

          The original motive for a 23rd-Rainier route probably goes back to the 2012 Seattle Transit Master Plan, which suggested a streetcar on Jackson-Rainier to Mt Baker. (The highest-priority streetcars were Westlake-Fremont-Ballard, Eastlake-UDsistrict, and the CCC. Jackson-Rainier to Mt Baker was in a lower tier.) That would require another route for lower Rainier, so the 23rd-Rainier concept was created. Later under Murray the streetcar goals were downgraded to RapidRide (except the CCC), but the concept of a 7-Mt Baker and a 48-Rainier remained. But they later lost some of their support and disappeared from the long-range plans.

          When the 23d-Rainier route was being considered, I had reservations about breaking the unity of the 7. It’s one of the top ten most successful transit corridors in Pugetopolis because it has relatively even highish density and a wealth of destinations across its entire length. The valley is too long to walk even a third of it, and a lot of people are lower-income, so they take the 7. There are tons of intra-Rainier/Jackson trips because of the large mix of destinations and housing across the entire length. The entire corridor is economically/culturally similar (and that extends to Renton), so a lot of people travel back and forth for family ties, shopping, church, etc. If I lived on Rainier south of Mt Baker, I’d be pissed if I were shunted away from north Rainier and Jackson to 23rd, which has a small fraction of the destinations and is residential-only for a couple miles until it finally gets to the U-District. So don’t kill the goose that lays the golden egg. People on 23rd can transfer at Mt Baker because they’re in a more residential area.

          Metro probably got other feedback like that. Other things happened too. The 45/48 were split, and subsequent ridership did not favor the 48 as predicted but instead the 45. That makes the case for a 23rd-Rainier route even weaker. I suspect the reason the 45 is such a powerhouse is it was assigned to University Way and goes all the way to 65th. There are a lot more people traveling between 65th and Pacific Street than to 23rd, as I witnessed while living between 52nd and Ravenna Blvd for two decades. And of course, beyond 65th & Roosevelt is Greenlake.

          I suspect Metro and SDOT got a lot of feedback with reservations about a 23rd-Rainier route for all these reasons. In any case, Metro/SDOT’s support for it went below 50% and it disappeared from the long-range plans and RapidRide R plan.

          That’s one case where we have transparency about Metro’s evolving support for a restructure concept. In contrast, we don’t have that about routes on Capitol Hill and in North Seattle. Instead restructures just silently contradict Metro’s long-range plan without explanation of the discrepency. So is Metro still leaning toward those concepts? How strongly? Has its support for them decreased or disappeared? Or is it just waiting for some future condition, but won’t say what it is. I would have thought RapidRide G would have been the condition, after seeing such radical restructures with the C, D, and E.

          Sometimes we know Metro wants something because it keeps getting proposed again in several restructures until it gets approved. That happened with splitting the 2 in the C/D and E restructures and the 2014 cuts. It failed every time because splitting the 2 seems to get more vocal opposition than any other change. Metro Connects 2016 had a new concept: both splitting the 2 AND moving the 2S to Pine-12th-Union. That was not in the G restructure, and Metro hasn’t said anything more about it. Metro DID move the 12 to Pine in the G restructure, so is that its replacement? But the 12 doesn’t go further east than 19th so it’s not as effective as an east-west route, and getting 19th instead seems like insufficient compensation.

      17. “It’s the nature of bus transit. Bus routes are ephemeral. ”

          For the same long-term network changes, a government can (1) make their long-term plans transparent and consistent, (2) go piecemeal blindly in the dark, or (3) have a consistent long-term plan but appear to be piecemeal. You end up with the same final network either way, but one process is much better than the others and serves the constituents better.

          #1 is best. If the authority must make changes midway, or its support for certain routes in the original plan gets stronger or weaker, tell us immediately.

          What we have is #2 or #3, and it’s important to know which. If we’re just doing restructures based on short-term feelings in one district, with no reference to a larger goal after one or the districts around it, and forgetting the goals of the previous one, that’s a problem. That’s how Metro was before Seattle’s Transit Master Plan in 2012 and Metro Connects in 2016. We mustn’t go back to that.

          If there is long-term consistency but it’s not visible in the restructures, then it needs to be made more visible. That’s not so much changing the restructures as it is explaining how the short-term actions or non-actions lead toward the long-term plan. That’s what we need to know whether Metro/SDOT are working toward a real long-term plan, or if the apparent long-term plans are abandoned.

      18. I wish SDOT would consider a gondola line replacing the 8 instead of spending a lot of money to move the 8 to Harrison and still getting bogged down at various intersections or soon in Ballard Link construction.

      19. WL
          A wise planner once coined this adage: one cannot take a plan across town.

          So, can SDOT and Metro afford frequent routes on both Denny Way and Harrison Street? What of service guideline four on route spacing?

          So, how could SDOT move transit any better on a narrow Harrison Street than on a four-lane Denny Way?

      20. Can Metro Connects be a good guide to transit planners? It is unaffordable; it was overly ambitious. The individual restructure projects have to have a budget constraint (e.g., hours, buses, operators). MC was unconstrainted; it was a dream. But it was not practical transit planning. Politically, it was pushed aside by the Executive’s pursuit of ST3. In 2009-2014, a Metro local option was the legislative ask of Olympia; in 2015, it became ST3 authorization. Note that the statewide highway projects were funded; CT got more local option and has a Swift program as a result. Metro did not get its local option. There is too little service in South King County.

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