Community Transit Restructure – 2024 and Beyond

41 Replies to “Community Transit Restructure – 2024 and Beyond”

1. Thanks for doing this rundown on CT’s major route restructure!

   The disappointing parts are what ST is doing. CT seems to have really thought this through.

   Running ST Express 512 every 15 minutes when the train is coming every 10 minutes is bizarre. Just pick times of day to run it every 8 or 16 minutes (during peak), or every 10 minutes or every 20 minutes outside of peak.

   It can’t require many more platform hours to run ST Express 513’s deadhead trips in service to Seaway in the morning, and back to Lynnwood in the evening.

   It would be interesting to see how many STX 510 riders are transferring to or from the train at Mountlake Terrace.

   As for the 515, we’ll see if the riders going to the southeast corner of South Lake Union defy the commentariat’s unanimous prediction of its emptiness. I do expect its ridership to go up over this week’s final CT 402 ridership, given their similar path, and the 515’s greater frequency. ST could pay attention to where passengers are boarding, and truncate the 515’s path through greater downtown.

   1. Running ST Express 512 every 15 minutes when the train is coming every 10 minutes is bizarre.

      My guess is ST doesn’t have the money to run the 512 every 10 minutes. Running every twenty minutes would be worse. Consider a Link to bus transfer. Half the riders would have to wait at least ten minutes. But it isn’t clear when exactly the bus would leave. It takes a while to get from the station platform to the bus stop. The travel time is not consistent. You would have to plan for the slowest traveler (otherwise someone waits 20 minutes). That means that half the riders have a very long wait. If it was a true multi-modal station (with bus platforms next to the light rail platform) then you could probably do it just fine, but Lynnwood Station isn’t built like that.

      The best thing to do is just run it as often as you can. It is worth noting that ST initially tried to time the 522 with Link and ended up abandoning that idea. It is also worth noting that at some point the train will be a lot more frequent.

   2. My hope would be they quickly kill off the 515, and put those hours into more 512 and 510. With the stop at Montlake Terrace Freeway Station, the 510 can provide most everything the 515 is doing. I think there’s enough demand for an Everett to Seattle express that it could get decent ridership.

      1. My guess is the first thing they do after killing off the 515 (which I assume will happen fairly quickly) is that they start running the 513 both directions during peak. Of course with the machinist strike there is no hurry.

2. A 32% net increase in bus hours is surprising! I would have expected a big increase in intra-Snohomish service hours as Link takes over the portion of trips to Seattle, but that it would result in a savings or the same number of net service hours. Is the budget then up by 32%?

   I haven’t heard anything yet about whether CT will alter its contract with a the private provider that has been running a lot of the inter-county service. Is it possible the 32% statistic is for an increase in CT-operated service that will no longer go to the private carrier?

   1. Hi, I will slightly edit the article, I think the 32% is over the course of 2024/2025/ by 2026. I’m not sure if it takes place immediately in 2024

      1. When you edit the post, can you make it clear if it’s total driver hours or just in-service bus hours (“revenue service hours”) when you edit the post? It is hard to tell how much of the gain is through more efficiency (less recovery time at layover ends or fewer long out-of-service trips) versus having more money for more driver hours without this clarification.

   2. The linked Heppner analysis shows only a 5 percent increase in weekday and Saturday service hours (4 percent Sunday).

      Where does the 32 percent come from?

      And with all of these sources, I can’t tell if it’s total service hours or just the service hours when the bus is operating on a route. Which is it? No longer running out of service buses in one direction to Downtown Seattle or padding schedules to address unpredictable congestion so that CT can instead run shorter distance service inside Snohomish County will increase that in-service hour type without adding any aggregate total driver hours.

      1. Hi the community transit webpage says by 2026, I simplified the intro a bit too much and left it out. when I have time I’ll correct it.

      2. With so many extensive changes in this week’s articles (Tuesday: East Seattle, today: CT, tomorrow: Metro/ST), it’s a lot to describe and review, so a few errors may creep in.

         I take some solace in the fact that the errors aren’t more numerous than Metro’s own errors in its restructure proposals, which we’ve noted over the years.

      3. @Al S,

         Maybe someone should just contact CT and ask for clarification. I’ve always found CT to be relatively approachable and customer focused.

         My understanding is that currently approx 30% of CT service hours go to service into Seattle. Those resources get redistributed after Sept 14th, so regardless of what the 32% means, there will be a huge improvement in intra-SnoCo service.

         But like I said, someone should just contact CT and ask.

      4. The CT post says “service hours”. That implies to me that it’s the hours of in-service buses rather than all driver hours. So I think my question is basically answered. I’m just wanting to make sure.

         That’s what I would expect. Agencies cannot increase total driver hours by 32 percent unless new funding is found. I didn’t think CT got a sudden influx of new funding.

         And I’m not criticizing CT nor Wesley. I’m instead highlighting a key benefit of having Lynnwood Link Extension! It lets CT reallocate service so that they can offer significantly better local service without a big operating cost increase!

      5. @Al S,

         “……..a key benefit of having Lynnwood Link Extension! It lets CT reallocate service so that they can offer significantly better local service without a big operating cost increase!”

         Exactly. CT appears to get this, and is leveraging hard off of LLE. It’s a good thing for local service inside SnoCo as CT should be able to deliver significantly better local service within their current budget constraints.

         Long, thin, commuter routes like the 400 and 800 series are incredibly resource intensive. It’s not just the service hours, but it is also increased deadheading and longer layover times for key assets. The economics are typically horrible.

         Reallocating those human and capital resources to more productive local routes should bring significant benefits to SnoCo even within their current funding structure. It’s a good thing.

      6. It’s said here:

         > The plan contains 35 routes with approximately 480,000 annual service hours—that’s 32% more service than 2023! It also represents the level of service frequency we expect to operate in 2026 once the light rail operates at full capacity.

         The full 32% increase doesn’t take place until 2026.

         It’s why the all day frequency map with the yellow bus routes isn’t quite correct yet. Route 102 Edmonds to Lynnwood and Route 103 Lynnwood to Seaway TC would have increased frequency then.

      7. Here is a link to the lastest short range plan:

         https://www.communitytransit.org/docs/default-source/pdfs/programs/adopted-2024-2029-transit-development-plan.pdf?sfvrsn=e05472b8_3

         The 480K that Wesley quotes lines up with the table on page 37. That table and text say “revenue service” hours rather than total driver hours. So unless the table is mislabeled (very unlikely), it’s definitely the in-service hours and not total hours like I thought.

      8. Service hours were relatively low in 2023 (as shown on page 25 of the document Al mentioned). Just to get back to 2020 levels would require a 33% increase. Basically CT plans to get back to where they were before the pandemic and then continue to ramp up.

         The big difference is how they are spending those hours. There is a lot less in the way of express service and a lot more Swift.

      9. “@Al S, “……..a key benefit of having Lynnwood Link Extension! It lets CT reallocate service so that they can offer significantly better local service without a big operating cost increase!” Exactly”.

         I would call Link to Lynnwood a big operating cost increase. The cost was billions that local taxpayers have paid for decades. It just went to ST rather than to CT.

         It isn’t clear to me exactly how much CT will increase local service due to Link from the different posts, but so far truncation hasn’t been as cost effective as some had hoped for or promised because when adding a feeder bus transfer to Link the frequency of a feeder bus has to be greater to make up for the transfer time to keep time of trip the same or better. Plus some feeder routes became more circuitous and through less dense or less direct areas in order to reach Link along the freeway. This could be different for CT because of its many long distance commuter routes to Seattle and back.

      10. It is highly likely that overall operating costs will go down with Lynnwood Link. However, as you pointed out, it is also highly likely that if we had simply spent that money on service we would get more out of it. Community Transit never ran that many buses into Seattle. Remember, they only ran during peak. Meanwhile, the Snohomish County coverage area is huge. Some of the buses (to places like Darrington) only run a couple times a day, but there are plenty of buses (Swift, 101, 201/202) that are quite long and run all day long. Thus the improvements — while significant — are spread out over a very wide area.

          In contrast when UW Link opened, Metro also truncated the buses that used to run from the U-District to downtown. But there were a lot more buses. Combined, these buses ran frequently from the U-District to Seattle, all day long. Metro then focused the savings just on that area. There were other improvements in terms of efficiency. So a lot of riders were asked to transfer — or walk a bit farther — but they got a lot more frequent service in exchange. Some of that is definitely happening in Snohomish County, but I don’t think as much. It is still a much better network although various parts of it still struggle. Then again, I think it is worth noting that except for people commuting downtown it was never great. That suggests that the best thing for the county — like many in country — would be to just spend more money on service.

          This also shows another advantage of focusing your subway building efforts on urban areas. For example Vancouver is about to build a subway line on Broadway. It will replace dozens, if not hundreds of buses that run every day (and could replace more if it went to UBC). It is tough to get that kind of service savings in the more distant areas. By all means it is important to have a good express-bus intercept, but eventually you get diminishing returns.

      11. Hi all I glanced through the service plan. Community transit revenue predominantly comes from sales tax (like 75/80%)

          The community transit currently receives 200 million annually and expected that to increase to 250 million by 2029 or around 5% per year.

          Thats how they are planning on funding the bus service hour increases.

          The express bus truncation has kinda gone into the 906 the new all day hourly express bus to stanwood. For sound transit the 510 hours would go into the 512/513 from Lynnwood to Everett.

      12. It might be good to sort through it, but I remember before the pandemic we discussed CT and bus expenses, and the national transit database numbers at that time showed CT operating expenses were extremely high per hour of service. It was higher per hour than King County Metro, and the complaint here at that time was how much KCM cost per service hour.

          The conclusion here was that CT was spending a hell of a lot of money deadheading buses around to deal with the one way expresses. It might not look like much on the timetable, but with the distances involved they get to be really expensive.

      13. “ I would call Link to Lynnwood a big operating cost increase. The cost was billions that local taxpayers have paid for decades. It just went to ST rather than to CT.”

          That certainly is the regional transit bargain that voters made.

          I will say that having predictable travel times on exclusive tracks with one driver carrying up to 600-800 riders is theoretically a cost efficient approach. Of course, running a rail system does require more staff doing other things than a bus system does — most notably track operations and maintenance as well as more extensive fare checking and security. It would be an interesting exercise to calculate whether LLE saves the region money rather than just saves CT money and costs ST money in operations cost.

          At this point, it’s a rather academic question. The new light rail systems is funded and built and operating and the bus routes now are operating on the restructured system.

      14. The thing to remember with transit investments is they usually pay good dividends in the long term. APTA has done the math on transit infrastructure investment and found for every $1 spent on transit infrastructure had an $4 ROI on average. Which feels about right in terms of what I’ve seen happen in Seattle when a new extension opens. New apartments, office space, and retail opens. New hotels in the case of Northgate. The urban villages grow and expand around the stations. Etc etc etc.

3. Thanks for an extensive description, Wesley!

   And congratulations to CT for rolling out a comprehensive new network design.

4. I was trying to figure out why CT103 would just end at some random coffee shop on Hardeson, but it looks like it’s actually a CT facility.

   So, that makes some sense.

5. This will make getting to Mukilteo vastly easier.

   1. Yes. My guess is that this is the the biggest improvement with this restructure. The time savings are dramatic. You wouldn’t need that many riders to see a gigantic time savings by any reasonable metric (e. g. time saved per rider multiplied by the number of riders otherwise known as total time saved). My guess is this also leads to a considerable increase in walk-on ferry use (and a considerable decrease in the number of people who drive onto the ferry).

   2. To be fair, in my opinion the state should be kicking in a bit for that route. The ferry and highway 525 are, after all, state highways and the auto traffic on them winds up being a state expense.

6. Will Community Transit be retiring the double-decker buses after the restructure, or will they be repurposed into local routes?

   1. I would expect to see the double deckers still in use on a number of the CT express routes. They’d just terminate them at Lynnwood now instead of running them all the way to Seattle.

      The switch to Lynnwood shouldn’t decrease the demand for whichever express route you care to name. It just changes where that route ends. Same locations, and therefore presumably similar demand remains.

7. For a moment I thought the 515 was a night owl service, for when the train wasn’t running. But it’s peak-only? It only runs when traffic is at its worst, all but guaranteeing that it will be slower than the train?

   Maybe that’s the point: to demonstrate how superior Link is. Someone at Sound Transit (a board member most likely) insisted on it, and the staff put it in, with the expectation of low ridership.

   1. I believe the 515 is meant to alleviate potential overcrowding on trains until the 2 Line opens next year.

      1. I’m expecting that the 2 Line trains will be in-service north of CID when the simulation begins before the full 2 Line opening. The extra train sets from OMF-E could even be available even before that once the tracks are ready for more than initial test trains (including the catenary power line).

   2. The 515 was only created because of fears of overcrowding in central and north Seattle until the full 2 Line doubles frequency between Lynnwood and downtown. The crowding is peak hours, especially the PM peak. The full 2 Line was supposed to be open already but construction delays on the west side have delayed cross-lake service, so it only runs in the Eastside. It’s supposed to be finished by late 2025 or early 2026.

      There are local night owls along portions of Link:

      67: Northgate to U-District, until 3:25am northbound, 2am southbound.

      49: Northgate to Westlake, 24 hours. (Bypasses UW station, which has no night owl.)

      7: Westlake to (approximately) Rainier Beach, 24 hours. (Bypasses Stadium, SODO, Beacon Hill. 3 blocks from Columbia City; a half mile from Othello and Rainier Beach.)

      36: Westlake to Beacon Hill, 24 hours. (Bypasses Stadium and SODO.)

      124: Westlake to SeaTac, until 3:44pm southbound, 2:32pm northbound. (Bypases all stations between Stadium and TIB, although 8 blocks from SODO.) The TIB-SeaTac extension is only when Link is not running.

      A: TIB to Angle Lake and beyond to Federal Way, 24 hours.

      The only night owls north of Northgate are spurs from one station:

      E: downtown to Aurora Village (King-Snohomish border), from Westlake station, 24 hours.

      65: Lake City, from 11th/Roosevelt (2-4 block west of U-District station), through-routed with 67.

8. New route 909 will be great for people traveling to Seattle, King County, and other destinations on the one line. However, it looks like the 909 is scheduled to arrive at Edmonds only 10 or 15 minutes before each sailing is scheduled to depart. There is a significant walk from the bus stop to the ferry itself as you have to walk up quite a long ramp that takes at least four minutes to walk up. That coupled with WSF’s policy of closing boarding two minutes prior to departure does not leave very much extra time if the bus is late. I am also curious as to how the bus will make the left turn from 104 (or Sunset Ave) onto Main Street. Typically, WSF starts loading cars no less than 10 minutes before a scheduled departure, and when the cars turn left from the ferry lanes onto Main Street all the other vehicles at that intersection have to wait for what always seems like a long time to me before the other traffic gets a chance to move. I wonder if this could delay the 909 and cause close connections at Edmonds to become even more difficult. Does anyone know if community Transit has specifically mentioned that signal timing?

   1. I’m pretty sure this is why the routes don’t operate on main. They enter and leave by Sunset, so to leave Edmonds they make two right turns from Railroad Street into the ferry traffic and then again with the ferry traffic, and to arrive the make a left turn with the ferry traffic, and left turn out of the ferry traffic to get onto Railroad Ave.

      It’s not great but I’m not sure what more they could do there without a bridge.

      1. They make a loop as shown here: https://www.communitytransit.org/docs/default-source/mappdfs/routemaps/current/map130.png. I assume the new route will do the same.

         While I think it is good that it serves the ferry I think Aiden points out the issues involved with it. The time it takes to get to the ferry varies depending on the rider. For some that is a four-minute ramp — for some it takes a lot longer. Thus it is hard to time it just right. This is also one the most densely populated part of Edmonds. For riders who live in the apartments along 6th (or the highway) a bus running every 50 minutes is really bad. I think they should just run a more frequent bus through here and let people try and time the ferry themselves. Those who ride regularly will figure out what works best for them. Those who need to get to the ferry at a certain time will allow extra time. At worst someone spends extra time waiting at one of the prettiest places on earth.

      2. Interesting, so they’re getting rid of the double right turn to get out of the station area.

         Seems like that will make it more difficult for the buses to get across Sunset.

      3. @Glenn — I’m not completely sure about any of this. I’m basically going on what I can gather from Google Maps and the various schedules (old and new). That picture I showed was of the current 130 route. It approaches from the south on a route very much like the future 909. That is why I figure the 909 will do the same.

         In contrast the 102 and 166 seem to do what you are talking about. This looks a lot messier if you are headed to the ferry (but more convenient if you parked in the park & ride).

9. As I live near route 120 the peak service of 30 minutes headway to Lynnwood Transit Center is ridiculous. As this is the only east-west route in south Snohomish county. This is why people drive to park&rides. Need at least 15 minute intervals.

10. Probably the biggest piece of this restructure is also the smallest: extending Swift Blue to 185th Link station. From my experience in the area, it suffers a lot from the lack of good connections between the express buses on I-5 and all the local routes. In the past, when I attempted to find a way to get from Everett to my friend’s place near 185th & Meridian, the best Google Maps could come up with was to take th 512 to Seattle and the E back north to 185th – a two hour undertaking at best that bypassed my actual destination by an hour. This frequent connection between the local corridors near the county line will be a huge help for a lot of people.

    I think the Stanwood bus has the potential to be an interesting route too. Stanwood has an old style downtown centered around the train station, and it seems like this route could be really helpful, in the same vein as the 271 between Everett and Gold Bar. It might not seem like there’s much along the 271, but it seems to be a reasonably popular route, and except for Everett the several cities it connects are small enough to be walking distance to many of the stops. Stanwood is sort of that way too. Sure, it’s got lots of unworkable sprawl around it, but so does Snohomish, Monroe, Gold Bar, etc. This could also be of some help to those coming from Island Transit Camano Island routes into Stanwood.

    1. @Glenn in Portland,

       Ya, the big story from yesterday was really what was happening with CT.

       Just the elimination of the commuter routes into Seattle after 50 years of operation was historic. But add in the huge bump in local SnoCo service, and the extension of Swift Blue to North Shoreline Station, and you have the makings of a day like no other.

       The extension of Swift Blue is huge. The extension of BRT to Link is going to make Swift Blue hugely more useful to commuters. And it now means that CT has Swift BRT connections to Link at both LCC and North Shoreline Station, as well as non-Swift connections to Link at Mountlake Terrace Station. That amount of flexibility is going to be very useful to residents of SnoCo, and should boost ridership considerably. And it appears that everything went smoothly.

       I look forward to seeing the impact of the CT restructures on Link ridership/crowding on Monday and Tuesday. There is going to be a huge river of ridership flowing on the 1-Line. Hopefully ST can handle it until Full ELE opens.

       I am a little surprised by the problems with RRG though. It’s not like this is the first time Metro has opened a new bus route. I expected it to go more smoothly.

       But hey, on to the RLE opening! Should be only a few months away.

Comments are closed.