WSDOT opened the SR 520 direct-access ramps to Montlake on Monday, allowing buses between UW and the Eastside to jump the queue at the Montlake Blvd exit.
I dropped by to watch them work in the afternoon and, though traffic was relatively light on a Monday, buses and HOV 3+ vehicles were staying on the HOV all the way to Montlake Blvd.
The bus stops on the lid itself are currently not in use, but Metro says they’ll start using them “at a later date.” There’s still quite a bit of fencing on the lid so it may be some time before it’s fully open.
Before lid construction began, the popular Montlake flyer stop allowed riders to catch an Eastside bus directly from 520 by walking down a flight of stairs. The ADA-inaccessible stop was closed in 2019 for lid construction. Now that connection is restored and improved.
Transit access in Montlake has come a long way from some of the early renders we were seeing in 2009. Prior to Monday, buses were often spending a good 10-15 minutes idling on the exit ramp. It often took longer to exit the ramp than the entire ride from Bellevue to Montlake. The reliability improvements should save service hours and improve ridership.
Hopefully this helps out the 255 from uw to kirkland a lot both for speed and ridership. I know the reliability and ridership dropped quite a lot with the reroute from downtown seattle to uw.
> I dropped by to watch them work in the afternoon and, though traffic was relatively light on a Monday, buses and HOV 3+ vehicles were staying on the HOV all the way to Montlake Blvd.
That’s nice to hear.
Also as a side note, was the second bascule bridge permanently shelved? I know there was a city vote but there are new council members as well.
The second bascule bridge is as good as dead, I think. I don’t think it’s funded by the legislature and Seattle’s stated opposition to it means the funding is better spent on the Portage Bay overages.
What exactly is Seattle’s objection?
Some context here: https://montlake.net/2019/09/just-say-no-to-the-second-montlake-bridge/
I like how the opponents focus on the historic character of the neighborhood and bridge and ignore bus passengers stuck in traffic, not. It’s like NIMBYs but for a bridge.
Would be nice if they spent some money on a better bus transfer at UW station. Its a key transfer point with many Eastside routes cut back to UW station. This is a place for a seamless convenient transfer.
Maybe a southbound busway between the station and stadium (route buses on Pacific Pl then thru this busway). Essentially the reverse of what the 255 does now to U District where it stays on Montlake Blvd stopping at UW station then getting a special signal to turn left from the right lane onto Pacific Pl.
Good idea. I think UW buses need to better serve the Link station for sure.
Would be nice if they spent some money on a better bus transfer at UW station.
They made some improvements, like the one you mentioned. Buses that come from the East Side and are heading towards the U-District stop very close to the station. Then they make the left turn turn in their own lane, with their own signal.
Maybe a southbound busway between the station and stadium (route buses on Pacific Pl then thru this busway).
You mean like this: https://maps.app.goo.gl/CZseAgMk6rG5F3o38. The bus would then turn left from Walla Walla to Montlake Boulevard (into the BAT lanes). I could see that working. It might slow things down as it would change the cycle on an already pretty complicated traffic light. Another alternative would be to add a midblock crossing by the bus stop (instead of the up-and-over pedestrian bridge). Riders would still have to wait for the light, but it would be a short walk.
I think that the first priority should be more BAT lanes though. We should have BAT lanes for the 44, although a lot of other buses would use them. So that means BAT lanes from 45th basically to the bridge.
One thing I’d love to see at UW is an elevator to the platform from the triangle stop.
One thing I’d love to see at UW is an elevator to the platform from the triangle stop.
Isn’t there? I always thought this was an elevator: https://maps.app.goo.gl/FM7pJ8nSZARyiu2HA. Or are you talking about another stop.
As far as I’ve been able to tell, that one only goes from street level to the pedestrian bridge. I’ve never found a button on it that would allow you to take that all the way to the platform level, or even the 1st mezzanine level.
As far as I’ve been able to tell, that one only goes from street level to the pedestrian bridge. I’ve never found a button on it that would allow you to take that all the way to the platform level, or even the 1st mezzanine level.
Right. That would require a tunnel. There is no tunnel access to the station. The station is deep underground; there is an underground parking garage; but there is no connection between the two. Instead they built a pedestrian overpass to an underground station.
All of these problems go back to the original mistake: They should have built the station in the triangle. There is already access from the underground parking garage to the hospital. You would access to the surface and that’s it. The buses heading to the U-District would stop along Pacific (https://maps.app.goo.gl/oCuGuSotsrVQhv1d7). The buses going towards Montlake would stop at the stop with the elevator. No one would have to cross the street (or go and over) to get from a bus to the station.
The problems are nothing new for Sound Transit. They made the same mistake with Mount Baker Station. It is quite possible this would have cost more (UW operates like a business, and they like their parking lots). But it would have been worth it in the long run. This is one of the most important stations in the entire system, and the various agencies are trying to put a square peg in a round hole because ST put the station in the wrong place.
The university blocked a station in the Triangle, or extending the existing parking garage tunnel under Montlake Blvd to the station. It said that would bring more non-UW people into the existing tunnel and increase UW’s security costs.
The west side elevator goes only between the street and the bridge. The existing tunnel is next to it, and you can see a stairway down to it near the elevator. I’m not sure if that’s the eastern entrance or if there’s another eastern entrance near it. The western entrances are on both sides of Pacific Street. The westernmost entrance is a bit west of the street, where the escalators go down near the medical center entrance.
Ross, yes like that route. Its not perfect but does get a much more direct connection to the station. It is one more light but seems worth it to serve such a major transfer point. Its a bit like the 550 at South Bellevue station… NB stays on the street, SB goes into the station/TC.
Would also likely allow buses to loop around the station should they choose to terminate routes at UW station.
Sound Transit should have had authority to locate the station itself and condemn a portion of UW campus if need be. Its crazy that a university has more authority than a regional transit agency because UW is deemed state level.
Anyhow the station location is now fixed and ain’t moving, so moving and changing everything else there including streets is the easier part.
The bottleneck appears to me to be the intersection of Montlake and Pacific St more than the bridge itself.
The addition of UW Station without an exit to the hospital and medical center has added to the congestion. There are lots more people that cross the street because of it than there were 9 years ago. The streets are pretty wide so pedestrians have both long waits and long signal phases in order to get them across.
Fixing the intersection bottleneck isn’t easy. It’s likely a combination of separating the traffic away from pedestrians, and reconfiguring the traffic with more one way segments or grade separations. Improvements there would almost certainly require a major change and be controversial because it would disrupt the triangle and maybe the underground parking garage — and no agency wants to pay for doing anything significant.
It’s been such a bottleneck for many years that there must have been several decent solutions identified and then rejected in the past. With new traffic patterns and now the potential to improve bus connectivity to 520 with the new ramps, it seems like a good time to revisit the situation and past solutions. And then possibly explore new ones.
The truncating of the 255 in 2020 at UW Station added an extra connection for nearly every Eastside rider trying to get downtown or Capitol Hill. That alone was annoying, but then factor in the multitudes of 520 closures, Montlake interchange closures, or events at UW stadium, and we’ve been left with service that is so unreliable weeknights or weekends, you have to start taking wild alternates around the north of the lake or the 550 via Bellevue. They’ve turned the 255 into a hot mess. With construction wrapping, we might seem some improvement, but adding a bus stop back to the Montlake lid isn’t going to solve things for the 255. Smart commuters on the 255 long ago turned Yarrow Point into the transfer point to the 545 (which couldn’t be more time-misaligned if they tried). And now we get full(er) trains coming from Lynnwood to greet all of us Eastsiders at UW Station. We can’t hurry that 2 line connection across I-90 soon enough.
Not a fan of the awnings, great for SoCal not so much the PNW where it rains a lot. They also feel a bit cheap looking tbh as well.
This is a great development. Issaquah, Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond and many more will be able to reach UW campus and North Seattle more efficiently! Hopefully more students will be able to rely on transit and avoid taking up the limited housing at the UW.
However, we’re still missing the link for South King residents like myself to get to the UW efficiently. BRT can close some of those gaps for Renton, Burien, and Maple Valley… but it’d be even better to get improved local bus service to Link and BRT. The more students who rely on public transit, the better! Already trained not to rely on a car.
I have driven on Montlake Blvd many times…and it is horrific! For buses, The 520 exit is slow. Alleviating traffic in this area must be a priority. Many other high traffic areas across the area that are not even being considered by their respective municipalities or the county. Bring bus service to these places…build more roads and transit lanes!
Amen. This Montlake Blvd/Husky Stadium area is so optimized for SOV commuters traveling thru as fast as possible while imposing huge delay to transit riders. I can’t count how many times I’ve just missed a bus, standing across the street waiting through multiple long traffic lights to cross 10 lanes of hyper prioritized motor vehicle traffic roaring by and had to wait 15-20 minutes for the next bus. The traffic island at Montlake & Pacific can barely fit all the pedestrians on it as they wait to cross the streets. Can we at least get an underpass or move the bus transfer?
No wonder traffic is so bad when traffic engineers reward SOV motorists congesting the streets with fast minimal-interruption travel and penalize transit riders for reducing congestion by packing multiple independent trips into a single vehicle. Might as well buy a car, drive to work and do my part to clog up the streets, the traffic engineers will do everything to accommodate, prioritize and reward my SOV trip.
There are a lot of needs in this area and perhaps one solution is a reversible bus/hov lane on Montlake. Perhaps an additional Montlake cut bridge.
But I’m not sure I really understand the traffic in that area. There’s a need for transit to University Village and the Children’s Hospital. There’s issues just getting around the perimeter of the University. There’s people transferring to Link to get downtown. It might need a comprehensive plan. Currently the biggest issue I believe is speed, as transit more or less exists already.
I have driven on Montlake Blvd many times…and it is horrific!
I think that is inevitable. The bigger issue is where the bus is stuck in traffic. Part of the problem is that various roadways are overbuilt. Then they converge onto other streets and you have major traffic problems. There is a tipping point where you really can’t build your way out of it. You can add more lanes, but that just makes the situation worse. We have reached that point. The only solution is to improve transit.
In general the standard should simply be one general purpose lane each direction unless you are on the freeway. The other lane should be given to the buses. We are definitely moving in that direction (on Westlake, Fremont, Rainier Avenue) we just need to do a lot more of that. The roads that don’t have buses (e. g. Mercer) should be the last ones to shrink. If it really doesn’t make sense to have buses there (or bike lanes) then shrink the road on those streets.
All of northeast Seattle funnels to the Montlake Bridge, and it’s their only way to access highway 520.
I suspect it may not be that long until the stops open at Montlake lid, they are moving fast and are relatively simple. As far as I know the project is to be complete this year and they have much of the landscaping complete. I guess the last thing is stringing up the trolley wires.