Alaskan Way (facing north-northwest) from Pike Street on September 8, 1961. Almost none of the visible structures exist today; even the seawall has been significantly rebuilt. This view is now repeatable from the new Overlook Walk. Cropped from item 201326, courtesy of the Seattle Municipal Archives.
Back in March of this year, Sound Transit appointed Terri Mestas to be the deputy CEO of megaproject delivery, a new position that was created specifically to oversee delivery of the agency’s large capital projects. Mestas is a seasoned leader of capital program management, most recently being the chief development officer at Los Angeles World Airports and holding stints at AECOM and CalTech, where she oversaw projects in aviation, national security, and more.
I had a chance to sit down with Mestas at the end of summer to hear directly from her about her vision for the agency and how she hopes to guide system expansion in a period where some missteps have set projects back.
The entire extended interview, edited for clarity and brevity, has been included below.
King County Metro’s RapidRide D Line travels inbound from Crown Hill to downtown Seattle, primarily through Ballard, Interbay, and Uptown. Outbound trips travel north from downtown to Crown Hill. In August 2024, the D Line was the fourth busiest bus route in King County with 8,824 average weekday boardings.
Average Ridership Per Trip
The plots below show the average weekday ridership by stop in each direction, color-coded by time of day. For a more detailed breakdown of how the plots are set up, please refer to the How to Read the Plots section of the article discussing Route 70.
Average Weekday Ridership per D Line Trip: March 2023 to March 2024. “Inbound” is toward Downtown; “Outbound” is toward Crown Hill. Click the plot to view at full-resolution in a new tab.
Community Transit will be improving Swift Blue along Evergreen Way in Lake Stickney (an unincorporated area north of Lynnwood) and Everett. The Swift corridor consists of Aurora Avenue, Pacific Highway and Evergreen Way. It currently has some BAT lanes with gaps. The new projects will fill in those gaps with new BAT lanes and potentially the missing sidewalks along the corridor.
These improvements follow up after the recent Swift Blue extension to Shoreline North Station via 200th St, Meridian Ave, and 185th St.
Although the RapidRide R project to replace Route 7 on Rainier Avenue has been postponed to 2031, SDOT (the Seattle Department of Transportation) has continued to implement bus lanes along Rainier Avenue. We’ll go over a moderate recap of the changes made of the past decade starting from 2015, focusing on the transit improvements, as well as outline some near term future changes.
There have been multiple SDOT projects on Rainier Avenue. In 2015, the Vision Zero Rainier Improvements debated between bike and bus lanes and chose bus lanes. In 2023, the Route 7 Transit Plus Multimodal Corridor fixed the sidewalk along the northern portion of Rainier Avenue. In 2022 and 2024, the Rainier Avenue S Bus Lane added bus lanes in two phases from Edmunds Street to Grand Street.
Ballots are being delivered for this year’s General Election and are due on November 5. On behalf of the Blog, the Seattle Transit Blog Elections Committee recommends the following:
Ballot Measures
No on I-2066
No on I-2109
No on I-2117
Yes on Seattle Proposition 1, Transportation Levy
Candidate Elections
Seattle City Council Position 8: Alexis Mercedes Rinck
All Other Elections
No Endorsement
Election Review
The STB Elections Committee considered many initiatives, ballot measures, and candidate elections on the ballot for the greater Seattle area, but ultimately chose to limit endorsements to a handful of races. A summary of our review and resulting recommendation for selected elections is provided below.
King County Metro’s Route 7 travels inbound from Rainier Beach to downtown Seattle, primarily through Rainier Valley and the International District. Outbound trips travel south from downtown to Rainier Beach. In August 2024, Route 7 was the second busiest bus route in King County with 10,599 average weekday boardings.
Before diving into the ridership data, it’s important to note the asymmetric routing of inbound and outbound trips. All inbound trips follow the same route (View Map). The trip starts on Henderson St east of Rainier and follows a clockwise loop back to the Rainier Ave/Henderson St intersection via Seward Park Ave and Rainier Ave. It then continues north on Rainier Ave to the rest of the route.
Outbound trips have two variations. As Route 7 approaches Henderson St from the north on Rainier Ave, about two thirds of trips turn left from Rainier Ave onto Henderson St and layover on Henderson St (View Map). The rest of the outbound trips continue on Rainier Ave to 57th Ave and loop via Prentice St (View Map). These trips then travel north back up to Henderson St to layover. Riders traveling inbound will need to transfer to one of the northbound stops on Rainier Ave between Seward Park Ave and Henderson St. All stops on the Prentice St loop are considered part of the outbound trip. In the outbound chart below, the bus is traveling south until the S Prentice St & 64th Ave S stop. It then travels north until S Henderson St & Rainier Ave S. The stop at S Henderson St & Rainier Ave S is served by all outbound trips, hence why its ridership data does not match the ridership data of the stops on the Prentice St loop.
When these data were recorded in 2023, some trips on Route 7 and Route 49 are through-run downtown. This results in the outbound stop at Pine St & 9th Ave showing more than 5 riders per trip despite minimal boardings. These riders are continuing from Route 49. The through-running service pattern was discontinued in September 2024.
Average Ridership Per Trip
The plots below shows the average weekday ridership by stop in each direction, color-coded by time of day. For a more detailed breakdown of how the plots are set up, please refer to the How to Read the Plots section of the article discussing Route 70.
Average Weekday Ridership per Route 7 Trip: March 2023 to March 2024. “Inbound” is toward Downtown; “Outbound” is toward Rainier Beach. Click the plot to view at full-resolution in a new tab.
