How elevated rail makes cities better. (RMTransit)
Can paths save America’s suburbs? (CityBeautiful)
This is an open thread.
20 Replies to “Sunday Double Feature: Elevated Rail and Pedestrian Paths”
The path video is a nice overview — but it doesn’t get deep into the analytics of where paths should go.
To me, it feels like at least half of the paths should be planned with a destination in mind — like a supermarket, restaurant district or transit station. Yes it’s nice to have recreation paths and neighborhood short cuts in walled areas — but paths can be so much more.
The video also doesn’t get into how some paths are a magnet for street crime. There is a perception that the open access makes a house more vulnerable to a break-in.
Luckily, the historically small block design across much of Seattle and several other cities makes paths less necessary as long as streets have sidewalks. I generally feel that sidewalks on streets should be doing the heavy lifting when it comes to pedestrian circulation — with paths being an additive solution when streets cannot connect.
Paths are a workaround for pedestrian-unfriendly design, especially cul-de-sacs and superblocks. Getting to a bus stop or a friend’s house can be important even if there’s no supermarket or restaurant around. The fact that they’re not around is a bigger problem, but one that’s beyond the scope of paths to solve.
I think Snoqualmie Ridge has paths. I’m curious what other neighborhoods have paths or most need them.
Crime wouldn’t seem to be an issue because the people who would use the paths are those living in the neighborhood or are already there. There’s not going to be a long path from 12th & Jackson to a neighborhood in Newport Hills.
Paths are a workaround for pedestrian-unfriendly design, especially cul-de-sacs and superblocks.
Exactly. The video talked about many different kinds of paths. This is interesting and especially relevant if you bike. But from a pedestrian and transit standpoint, the most important thing is often just the ability to get from “Point A to Point B” in a reasonably direct way. If you can’t do this in a car (or even a bike) it is not the end of the world. But if you can’t do this as a pedestrian, transit dies.
Jarrett Walker mentions the subject quite a bit and often refers to it as “walkability”. I think this is the best post about it: https://humantransit.org/2010/05/culdesac-hell-and-the-radius-of-demand.html. Neighborhoods that lack walkability tend to have very bad transit even if the city grows up around it. For example much is made of the lack of density in Surrey Downs, just west of the East Main Station (on East Link). But another (very big) issue is that “you can’t get there from here” (https://maps.app.goo.gl/38bHUsQAy7TbVezc7). That is a needlessly long walk. You can’t blame ST for that, it is just the way they made the streets in those days.
Here is another example: https://maps.app.goo.gl/33LHafZ75SS8j1XN7. This is a fifteen minute walk for a distance (as the crow flies) of about 320 meters (or about 1,000 feet). This means the street layout turns what would be considered a bus stop well within walking distance to one that isn’t.
This hurts all transit. Ridership goes down. Agencies are forced to simply abandon neighborhoods or run infrequent buses on low-density streets. This means it is worse for both ridership and coverage.
One of the nice trends of the last twenty years is that (from what I can tell) this is becoming a lot less common. They still have cul-de-sacs and they still have the single-use housing developments (that push daily life outside the realm of a pedestrian) but they at least allow pedestrians to access the roadway (greatly increasing the chance that there will be some transit there).
I like Ross’s take on elevated trackways, and he’s spot on. However, sitting in his perch in transit-savvy Vancouver, he isn’t dealing with Skycastle Transit. The panjandrums running it seem to think that to have an elevated structure one has to take out half the houses in a continuous string of blocks, because heaven forfend that we take a lane of traffic for the supports!
Unfortunately, our only “legacy” rail rights of way that might be so used are already taken by a bike path and parking slots.
Mostly, I see our region being somewhat ambivalent about elevated rail tracks in most places. That’s often because our most recent projects are in freeway rights of way anyway — and so it really is a function of the terrain and needed overpasses and underpasses on a project.
One big advantage with aerial is that generically they are cheaper and faster to build than underground. Bored tunnels get favored often in our region — and the station depths to reach them are whitewashed in public discourse. Depending on mezzanines, stations can be closer to the street and thus easier to reach from the sidewalk.
The thing that makes elevated rail harder here is our varied topography. New York and Chicago and Miami are relatively flat in the core activity areas. Views are generally not a major preoccupation. That makes aerial less controversial.
Many cities also are next to seas that make going below sea level more challenging. If you get hurricanes or typhoons, tracks on stilts is very strategic!
I do think that ST should have explored aerial tracks in a few places where they won’t. One is above the BNSF tracks in SODO, where the DSTT2 corridor could have been elevated as far north as Washington Street or the West Seattle alignment could have been elevated over SR 99 as far north as Dearborn. For that matter, Alaskan Way itself could have been an aerial rail line once the AWV was removed.
Another is in West Seattle where aerial options were trashed by locals in favor of underground options. I don’t think those interests realize that a decade of subway station digging and building can destroy the neighborhood character anyway.
I was surprised that aerial tracks above 15th and Elliott didn’t get more traction.
I think any rail on Aurora will be aerial. That’s a topic years if not decades away though.
A final application would have been MLK. If ST did something similar to the Expo line and build grade separations like LA did at La Brea and La Cienega it would allow trains to run faster and safer. But there’s not enough money with ST expansion to begin with so I don’t see how ST could consider any elevated segments on MLK for several more years.
Maybe that is what North King can do with some of its $10 billion: build grade separations at the six major arterials that cross Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. That should take a couple of billion, leaving maybe eight for the north half of the SLU/First Hill Light Metro. Extensions into First Hill can be funded by the city later as it recovers from the Amazon Exodus.
To be clear, Al, I’m projecting that WSLE and “full” BLE are both tanked for being too expensive and the wrong technologies. Only the rump of BLE from Westlake Center to Smith Cove and a little MF just north of the Cove station would be funded as part of ST3.
I still think some of the concerns with elevated rail are 1) visual impact, 2) noise and 3) topography. Steel tracks are inherently noisy, in particular in curves, therefore you need to add acoustic wraps. Recently Sound Transit has also been using concrete I-trusses which are inherently visually imposing than the slick guideways they use for the Paris RER. Rail also is not very good at dealing with hills which means you need to do more gradual rises with higher guideways and stations. That all changes with more modern technology such as the TSB maglev: no noise, monorail style slick prefabricated guideway beams, and ability to handle 10% rises.
see: https://seattletransitblog.com/2023/12/03/evolution-of-urban-guideways/
“Unfortunately, our only “legacy” rail rights of way that might be so used are already taken by a bike path and parking slots.”
While it has been repurposed for parking, the section of the old streetcar and interurban line along Westlake is mostly still there and could be made elevated above the parking.
OK, perhaps it might. but how would it make its way downtown? I guess it could sort of replace the Monorail with a stub station at Fifth and Pine, but I’m really skeptical it could go farther south than there in the air. Doing a dive, like the CTA Red Line does into the State Street Subway tunnel would be pretty ugly, with all the fencing it requires.
Having a stub station creates a pretty strict minimum four minute headway because even with an automated train someone has to check that everyone exits the train properly.
Pedestrians paths important for reasons beyond transit. Not only is it important to be be able to take a direct walking route to bus stops, people also need direct walking paths to essentially shopping destinations.
Consider this trip from a random house in Kirkland to Costco, for example: https://maps.app.goo.gl/NZxdH65kw7DFeoUDA. Without the path, the walk would take much longer; while one could theoretically walk to 124th and ride the #239 one stop, waiting for a half-hourly bus to go such a short distance is a huge pain, and you still end up with a door-to-door travel time that is longer than simply walking down the path.
Another important point about pedestrian paths – excluding paths, the basic street grid is designed to shunt traffic onto arterials. This makes perfect sense for cars – after all, you don’t want lots of cars cutting through neighborhoods. But, when you have a street network that shunts pedestrians onto arterial roads, like cars, that’s bad, as it forces you to take routes that are noisy and polluting, without the insulating bubble of a windshield to protect you. Many arterial roads also have sidewalks that are too narrow and/or too close to street, making walking on them for any length, simply dangerous.
In terms of shear distance, this route isn’t that much longer than if there were paths cutting through the greenbelt and apartment complex. But it’s a lot less pleasent, as you’re forced to walk the bulk of the distance in conditions like this: https://maps.app.goo.gl/HdeUjXv6ztRnbiS56
Yes, there is the option to ride the #250 bus a couple of stops to avoid walking on Redmond Way, but the point is, one shouldn’t have to do that. Streetscapes need to be designed to encourage walking, not discourage it, and there’s no room to redesign this section of Redmond Way to promote walking without severely compromising its purpose as a car sewer. Hence, the need to create alternate walking routes, that avoid the arterials (and, no, this is not a substitute for sidewalks on the arterials themselves, as business on the arterials need to be reachable on foot; we need both).
One of the days where I wish Pierce Transit had double deckers for ST express routes as the bus is just very full that it’s standing room only.
In light of the cost overruns with the West Seattle extension, and short of cancelling that project (which this forum has argued ad nauseam so I will not), Sound Transit should explore an elevated option for Ballard Link through Downtown Seattle as an alternative to DSTT2.
My (very rough) proposed route going southbound would go elevated over Mercer instead of entering a portal after Smith Cove, and flyover 99 to Harrison street before continuing over Harrison to Westlake Ave. There is a two story commercial building at the SW corner of Westlake and Harrison that the tracks could go over to smooth the curve. It would continue over Westlake until Stewart before doglegging along Stewart over the monorail tracks to 4th Ave and continuing on 4th all the way down to the ID. From there you could continue along 4th or over the BNSF tracks, crossing over somewhere around Royal Brougham before descending down along the SODO busway to SODO station.
The transfers won’t be perfect but you avoid the extremely deep and expensive Downtown stations by not tunneling under 99. For Westlake, I would permanently close Pine street to vehicles and connect elevators to the platform from an elevated station on 4th and an additional set of stairs and escalators to the mezzanine from street level. For the ID, I still struggle to think of a station placement that would avoid replacing the 4th avenue viaduct.
Alternatively, you could take 5th and go above or even replace the monorail but 5th gets much narrower than 4th south of Stewart and you would have to destroy the tree canopy in addition to re-opening the can of worms around the 5th Ave CID station.
That would certainly save enough money that BLE becomes possible, but it does miss the opportunity to serve First Hill.
Also, Mercer west of First West is pretty narrow for a double track elevated railway. You’d get a lot of flack for taking one of the parking lanes and have to attack the tree canopy there as well. There is very little off-street parking in the neighborhood.
These may not be “fatal”, but in honesty, I’d say that an automated Light Metro between Smith Cove and a station or two on First Hill would be a better use of the $8 billion left after Spine enhancements. Especially if the Westlake Center station can be shallower since it wouldn’t have to dive so precipitously to reach tunneling depths in the International District. IF Ballard grows into a genuine clone of the U-District — unlikely, but possible — then the City could fund an extension from Smith Cove to downtown Ballard and lease it to Skycastle for operations.
There is a stacked aerial station in Taiwan. It’s called Zhongyuan metro station. It’s above a street (Bannan Road) that appears to be only 40-50 feet wide.
Imposing? Yes. But it can be done.
Taiwan gets more earthquakes and typhoons than Seattle does, by the way.
It may be time to start thinking out-of-the-box about non-tunneled alignments. And this is compatible with automation.
The retail district business community has repeatedly opposed closing Pine Street in front of Westlake Park, so it’s not worth making the proposal dependent on it. Closing Pine Street would be a separate decision led by the city, not something ST can convince Seattle to do. And Seattle is not in a mood to, especially with retail currently struggling. Closing Pine Street would also displace all the east-west buses to Capitol Hill, so what would they do?
I had assumed adding additional egresses to Westlake Station from above would require closing Pine St., but it’s probably not necessary. I think there could be an opportunity to daylight Westlake Station by at least partially removing the street above. Hypothetically, buses could be re-routed to Pike by making the street bi-directional south of 9th Ave, and yes, you might have to piss some people off by removing parking. Regardless, I don’t believe the business community should have the final say here.
Temporary closing for construction is less of a concern than permanent closing.
SDOT is in the middle of renovating Pike-Pine and has done over a dozen blocks already. Each one now has a protected bike lane, and a concrete curb between the bike lane and vehicle lanes, and some parts have a bus lane and/or wider sidewalks. The one-way system is extended east to Melrose Avenue. SDOT intends to eventually extend it to Broadway. So in order to add a westbound bus lane to Pike Street, you’d have to eliminate the car lane. Then you’d have to make Pine Street two-way for cars, which I gather you don’t want. There aren’t any other through streets where buses or cars could go through beween 1st Avenue and Broadway and beyond, unless you squeeze onto narrow Union or Seneca Streets or use Madison Street, and those have elevation differences, less retail, and pedestrian challenges getting to Pike-Pine.
Why isn’t the Metro #2 bus using the new bus-only lane on Union just west of 12th ave? Everything else looks complete at that intersection but that bit of Union is still blocked off and the #2 is still on a slow, circuitous detour.
The path video is a nice overview — but it doesn’t get deep into the analytics of where paths should go.
To me, it feels like at least half of the paths should be planned with a destination in mind — like a supermarket, restaurant district or transit station. Yes it’s nice to have recreation paths and neighborhood short cuts in walled areas — but paths can be so much more.
The video also doesn’t get into how some paths are a magnet for street crime. There is a perception that the open access makes a house more vulnerable to a break-in.
Luckily, the historically small block design across much of Seattle and several other cities makes paths less necessary as long as streets have sidewalks. I generally feel that sidewalks on streets should be doing the heavy lifting when it comes to pedestrian circulation — with paths being an additive solution when streets cannot connect.
Paths are a workaround for pedestrian-unfriendly design, especially cul-de-sacs and superblocks. Getting to a bus stop or a friend’s house can be important even if there’s no supermarket or restaurant around. The fact that they’re not around is a bigger problem, but one that’s beyond the scope of paths to solve.
I think Snoqualmie Ridge has paths. I’m curious what other neighborhoods have paths or most need them.
Crime wouldn’t seem to be an issue because the people who would use the paths are those living in the neighborhood or are already there. There’s not going to be a long path from 12th & Jackson to a neighborhood in Newport Hills.
Paths are a workaround for pedestrian-unfriendly design, especially cul-de-sacs and superblocks.
Exactly. The video talked about many different kinds of paths. This is interesting and especially relevant if you bike. But from a pedestrian and transit standpoint, the most important thing is often just the ability to get from “Point A to Point B” in a reasonably direct way. If you can’t do this in a car (or even a bike) it is not the end of the world. But if you can’t do this as a pedestrian, transit dies.
Jarrett Walker mentions the subject quite a bit and often refers to it as “walkability”. I think this is the best post about it: https://humantransit.org/2010/05/culdesac-hell-and-the-radius-of-demand.html. Neighborhoods that lack walkability tend to have very bad transit even if the city grows up around it. For example much is made of the lack of density in Surrey Downs, just west of the East Main Station (on East Link). But another (very big) issue is that “you can’t get there from here” (https://maps.app.goo.gl/38bHUsQAy7TbVezc7). That is a needlessly long walk. You can’t blame ST for that, it is just the way they made the streets in those days.
Here is another example: https://maps.app.goo.gl/33LHafZ75SS8j1XN7. This is a fifteen minute walk for a distance (as the crow flies) of about 320 meters (or about 1,000 feet). This means the street layout turns what would be considered a bus stop well within walking distance to one that isn’t.
This hurts all transit. Ridership goes down. Agencies are forced to simply abandon neighborhoods or run infrequent buses on low-density streets. This means it is worse for both ridership and coverage.
One of the nice trends of the last twenty years is that (from what I can tell) this is becoming a lot less common. They still have cul-de-sacs and they still have the single-use housing developments (that push daily life outside the realm of a pedestrian) but they at least allow pedestrians to access the roadway (greatly increasing the chance that there will be some transit there).
I like Ross’s take on elevated trackways, and he’s spot on. However, sitting in his perch in transit-savvy Vancouver, he isn’t dealing with Skycastle Transit. The panjandrums running it seem to think that to have an elevated structure one has to take out half the houses in a continuous string of blocks, because heaven forfend that we take a lane of traffic for the supports!
Unfortunately, our only “legacy” rail rights of way that might be so used are already taken by a bike path and parking slots.
Mostly, I see our region being somewhat ambivalent about elevated rail tracks in most places. That’s often because our most recent projects are in freeway rights of way anyway — and so it really is a function of the terrain and needed overpasses and underpasses on a project.
One big advantage with aerial is that generically they are cheaper and faster to build than underground. Bored tunnels get favored often in our region — and the station depths to reach them are whitewashed in public discourse. Depending on mezzanines, stations can be closer to the street and thus easier to reach from the sidewalk.
The thing that makes elevated rail harder here is our varied topography. New York and Chicago and Miami are relatively flat in the core activity areas. Views are generally not a major preoccupation. That makes aerial less controversial.
Many cities also are next to seas that make going below sea level more challenging. If you get hurricanes or typhoons, tracks on stilts is very strategic!
I do think that ST should have explored aerial tracks in a few places where they won’t. One is above the BNSF tracks in SODO, where the DSTT2 corridor could have been elevated as far north as Washington Street or the West Seattle alignment could have been elevated over SR 99 as far north as Dearborn. For that matter, Alaskan Way itself could have been an aerial rail line once the AWV was removed.
Another is in West Seattle where aerial options were trashed by locals in favor of underground options. I don’t think those interests realize that a decade of subway station digging and building can destroy the neighborhood character anyway.
I was surprised that aerial tracks above 15th and Elliott didn’t get more traction.
I think any rail on Aurora will be aerial. That’s a topic years if not decades away though.
A final application would have been MLK. If ST did something similar to the Expo line and build grade separations like LA did at La Brea and La Cienega it would allow trains to run faster and safer. But there’s not enough money with ST expansion to begin with so I don’t see how ST could consider any elevated segments on MLK for several more years.
Maybe that is what North King can do with some of its $10 billion: build grade separations at the six major arterials that cross Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. That should take a couple of billion, leaving maybe eight for the north half of the SLU/First Hill Light Metro. Extensions into First Hill can be funded by the city later as it recovers from the Amazon Exodus.
To be clear, Al, I’m projecting that WSLE and “full” BLE are both tanked for being too expensive and the wrong technologies. Only the rump of BLE from Westlake Center to Smith Cove and a little MF just north of the Cove station would be funded as part of ST3.
I still think some of the concerns with elevated rail are 1) visual impact, 2) noise and 3) topography. Steel tracks are inherently noisy, in particular in curves, therefore you need to add acoustic wraps. Recently Sound Transit has also been using concrete I-trusses which are inherently visually imposing than the slick guideways they use for the Paris RER. Rail also is not very good at dealing with hills which means you need to do more gradual rises with higher guideways and stations. That all changes with more modern technology such as the TSB maglev: no noise, monorail style slick prefabricated guideway beams, and ability to handle 10% rises.
see: https://seattletransitblog.com/2023/12/03/evolution-of-urban-guideways/
“Unfortunately, our only “legacy” rail rights of way that might be so used are already taken by a bike path and parking slots.”
While it has been repurposed for parking, the section of the old streetcar and interurban line along Westlake is mostly still there and could be made elevated above the parking.
OK, perhaps it might. but how would it make its way downtown? I guess it could sort of replace the Monorail with a stub station at Fifth and Pine, but I’m really skeptical it could go farther south than there in the air. Doing a dive, like the CTA Red Line does into the State Street Subway tunnel would be pretty ugly, with all the fencing it requires.
Having a stub station creates a pretty strict minimum four minute headway because even with an automated train someone has to check that everyone exits the train properly.
Pedestrians paths important for reasons beyond transit. Not only is it important to be be able to take a direct walking route to bus stops, people also need direct walking paths to essentially shopping destinations.
Consider this trip from a random house in Kirkland to Costco, for example: https://maps.app.goo.gl/NZxdH65kw7DFeoUDA. Without the path, the walk would take much longer; while one could theoretically walk to 124th and ride the #239 one stop, waiting for a half-hourly bus to go such a short distance is a huge pain, and you still end up with a door-to-door travel time that is longer than simply walking down the path.
Another important point about pedestrian paths – excluding paths, the basic street grid is designed to shunt traffic onto arterials. This makes perfect sense for cars – after all, you don’t want lots of cars cutting through neighborhoods. But, when you have a street network that shunts pedestrians onto arterial roads, like cars, that’s bad, as it forces you to take routes that are noisy and polluting, without the insulating bubble of a windshield to protect you. Many arterial roads also have sidewalks that are too narrow and/or too close to street, making walking on them for any length, simply dangerous.
To illustrate, consider this pedestrian route, which is what you get when you don’t have paths: https://maps.app.goo.gl/BFEaiaZPBXQu9mWZA
In terms of shear distance, this route isn’t that much longer than if there were paths cutting through the greenbelt and apartment complex. But it’s a lot less pleasent, as you’re forced to walk the bulk of the distance in conditions like this: https://maps.app.goo.gl/HdeUjXv6ztRnbiS56
Yes, there is the option to ride the #250 bus a couple of stops to avoid walking on Redmond Way, but the point is, one shouldn’t have to do that. Streetscapes need to be designed to encourage walking, not discourage it, and there’s no room to redesign this section of Redmond Way to promote walking without severely compromising its purpose as a car sewer. Hence, the need to create alternate walking routes, that avoid the arterials (and, no, this is not a substitute for sidewalks on the arterials themselves, as business on the arterials need to be reachable on foot; we need both).
One of the days where I wish Pierce Transit had double deckers for ST express routes as the bus is just very full that it’s standing room only.
In light of the cost overruns with the West Seattle extension, and short of cancelling that project (which this forum has argued ad nauseam so I will not), Sound Transit should explore an elevated option for Ballard Link through Downtown Seattle as an alternative to DSTT2.
My (very rough) proposed route going southbound would go elevated over Mercer instead of entering a portal after Smith Cove, and flyover 99 to Harrison street before continuing over Harrison to Westlake Ave. There is a two story commercial building at the SW corner of Westlake and Harrison that the tracks could go over to smooth the curve. It would continue over Westlake until Stewart before doglegging along Stewart over the monorail tracks to 4th Ave and continuing on 4th all the way down to the ID. From there you could continue along 4th or over the BNSF tracks, crossing over somewhere around Royal Brougham before descending down along the SODO busway to SODO station.
The transfers won’t be perfect but you avoid the extremely deep and expensive Downtown stations by not tunneling under 99. For Westlake, I would permanently close Pine street to vehicles and connect elevators to the platform from an elevated station on 4th and an additional set of stairs and escalators to the mezzanine from street level. For the ID, I still struggle to think of a station placement that would avoid replacing the 4th avenue viaduct.
Alternatively, you could take 5th and go above or even replace the monorail but 5th gets much narrower than 4th south of Stewart and you would have to destroy the tree canopy in addition to re-opening the can of worms around the 5th Ave CID station.
That would certainly save enough money that BLE becomes possible, but it does miss the opportunity to serve First Hill.
Also, Mercer west of First West is pretty narrow for a double track elevated railway. You’d get a lot of flack for taking one of the parking lanes and have to attack the tree canopy there as well. There is very little off-street parking in the neighborhood.
These may not be “fatal”, but in honesty, I’d say that an automated Light Metro between Smith Cove and a station or two on First Hill would be a better use of the $8 billion left after Spine enhancements. Especially if the Westlake Center station can be shallower since it wouldn’t have to dive so precipitously to reach tunneling depths in the International District. IF Ballard grows into a genuine clone of the U-District — unlikely, but possible — then the City could fund an extension from Smith Cove to downtown Ballard and lease it to Skycastle for operations.
There is a stacked aerial station in Taiwan. It’s called Zhongyuan metro station. It’s above a street (Bannan Road) that appears to be only 40-50 feet wide.
Imposing? Yes. But it can be done.
Taiwan gets more earthquakes and typhoons than Seattle does, by the way.
It may be time to start thinking out-of-the-box about non-tunneled alignments. And this is compatible with automation.
The retail district business community has repeatedly opposed closing Pine Street in front of Westlake Park, so it’s not worth making the proposal dependent on it. Closing Pine Street would be a separate decision led by the city, not something ST can convince Seattle to do. And Seattle is not in a mood to, especially with retail currently struggling. Closing Pine Street would also displace all the east-west buses to Capitol Hill, so what would they do?
I had assumed adding additional egresses to Westlake Station from above would require closing Pine St., but it’s probably not necessary. I think there could be an opportunity to daylight Westlake Station by at least partially removing the street above. Hypothetically, buses could be re-routed to Pike by making the street bi-directional south of 9th Ave, and yes, you might have to piss some people off by removing parking. Regardless, I don’t believe the business community should have the final say here.
Temporary closing for construction is less of a concern than permanent closing.
SDOT is in the middle of renovating Pike-Pine and has done over a dozen blocks already. Each one now has a protected bike lane, and a concrete curb between the bike lane and vehicle lanes, and some parts have a bus lane and/or wider sidewalks. The one-way system is extended east to Melrose Avenue. SDOT intends to eventually extend it to Broadway. So in order to add a westbound bus lane to Pike Street, you’d have to eliminate the car lane. Then you’d have to make Pine Street two-way for cars, which I gather you don’t want. There aren’t any other through streets where buses or cars could go through beween 1st Avenue and Broadway and beyond, unless you squeeze onto narrow Union or Seneca Streets or use Madison Street, and those have elevation differences, less retail, and pedestrian challenges getting to Pike-Pine.
Why isn’t the Metro #2 bus using the new bus-only lane on Union just west of 12th ave? Everything else looks complete at that intersection but that bit of Union is still blocked off and the #2 is still on a slow, circuitous detour.
I think they are still working on it. SDOT sent out an email. I can’t find it on the the SDOT website, but I found it here: https://deal.town/city-of-seattle/rapidride-g-line-madison-st-project-wrap-up-updates-F3ZAV62L225