Kicking off a banner year for transit openings region-wide, King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci spoke during the opening ceremony of the 2 Line Starter Line in April. Photo by Nathan Dickey.

This year saw a handful of new writers join STB’s staff and a few excellent serial posts sparking good discussion. In the transit world, we saw the opening of the RapidRide G Line, the Link 2 Line Starter Line, the Lynnwood Link Extension, bus restructures in King and Snohomish Counties, and continued rebound in ridership from the lows of 2020. Let’s look back at the Top 10 Most Read (by pageviews) and Most Commented posts of 2024.

Most Read (Top 10, descending order):

Most Commented (Top 10, excluding Open Threads):

The top ten Open Threads garnered 150-300 comments, the result of an active and unique comment community bringing healthy discussion to the Blog.

69 Replies to “Most read & commented STB posts of 2024”

  1. Reminder: A lot of transit is free today until 3 am. That includes King County Metro, Link Light Rail, ST Express, Snohomish Community Transit, Pierce Transit, Everett Transit, Seattle Streetcars, and King County Water Taxis.

    The monorail will be charging its regular $3.50 fare (which goes up to $4 on January 2, after the monorail takes New Year’s Day off). The monorail will shut down ca. 10:30 in preparation for the Space Needle fireworks, then start up again after the show is over.

    Light rail service will be extended, coming roughly every 15 minutes.

    Everett Transit, Kitsap Transit, Sounder, and King County Ferries will also be taking New Years Day off. Most other NYD schools services will be on a Sunday schedule.

    2. Thanks. I just remembered this late yesterday and didn’t have a chance to update the roundup or this article.

  2. I’m grateful that the torch of keeping STB interesting and informative keeps getting passed to well-spoken people.

    And even though there can be disagreements and even occasionally unnecessarily insulting comments by some posters, I think most if not all are primarily concerned as riders. It’s a perspective I don’t often read among our development-obsessed local elected officials.

    1. STB’s comment section is what sets it apart from other public outlets focused on transit and land use, and the occasional flare up is to be expected.

      I am hopeful we can continue to attract new volunteers and new voices to the blog. There are some critical junctions coming up (restructures for Federal Way Link, decisions regarding ST3 projects, Seattle Transportation Levy projects, Metro capital projects including electrification, and more) for which it will be good to have a lively and public discussion forum.

  3. It’s looking less likely the Cascades article will be finished for tomorrow, so there may not be a New Year’s Day article. Enjoy your free fares today, everyone.

  4. Thank you to Mike and Ross for stepping up from the commentariat. Thank you Sherwin for coming back. Thank you to Mike for the deep data-analytical series. Thank you to Martin for offering out-of-the-box perspective and analysis. Thank you to Nathan for taking the reins!

  5. I think the New Year is also a good time to talk about what posts we’d like to see on STB in 2025 (as a dedicated post, not just an item in an open thread). Some things on my list:

    1) Opening of remaining sections of the 2 line
    2) Why does Metro’s cost per service hour keep increasing above inflation, and how do we continue to provide good service long-term in that environment? Higher taxes to fund the same service works works for awhile, but only goes so far.
    3) A deep dive into the logistics in operating a fleet of battery buses, and how what’s available in the U.S. compares with the rest of the world.
    4) A series on bus routes with questionable route deviations (for example, the 225’s path through Totem Lake is atrocious).
    5) Developments on ST3 Link extensions

    1. Don’t forget the 249 looping around education hill. I feel like we should get rid of it and replace it with a dart route. But the bus driver shortage may make it unappealing. But 249 does serve a pretty important route with many destinations so the boost in frequency would be pretty helpful.

      2. The 249 loop around Viewpoint is already going away, though. When the Link restructure comes, it will be replaced by a new route that goes from Overlake Village, to 24th and 180th, then along West Lake Sammamish to Downtown Redmond.

        I live near the eastern end of the loop, so this is my bus, but I would have definitely understood if the loop was eliminated. I’m usually the only person on the bus when I get on or off. The portion of the route between Interlake High School and 520/140th seems to have the highest ridership. I expect the replacement route will get more riders, as there are a number of apartment complexes along West Lake Sammamish.

      3. The EastLink service restructure is definitely an improvement. It replaces the eastern part of the 249, along with the big Education Hill loop with new route 222 that forms a straighter path to Cottage Lake. Meanwhile, the new route 249 ends at Spring District Station.

        It’s better, but the new 249 is still not great. For Clyde Hill, Medina, and Beaux Arts, the route doesn’t have much ridership potential, but makes sense from a coverage standpoint since it will be the only route serving these areas, these areas have had bus service for decades, and for people living in them who want the bus, it does the job of getting them from their home to a transit hub along a reasonably direct route.

        The part of the new 249 that feels the most questionable to me is actually Yarrow Point to 120th St. Station. The section from Yarrow Point to South Kirkland P&R is redundant with the 255, while the section from South Kirkland P&R to 116th is redundant with the 250. The only section left where the 249 isn’t redundant 120th from 520 to Spring Blvd. However, this section is only about 6/10ths of a mile long, which means it’s all a short walk to either the 250 at Northup/116th or Link at Spring Blvd./120th, plus there’s simply not much there, with a *lot* of the space taken up by a King County Metro bus yard and a Sound Transit Link maintenance facility. There is a BMW dealership and a couple of strip malls, but that’s about it.

        Which essentially leaves only one use case left for the 249, which is people who live in apartments right next to Spring District Station wanting a one-seat ride to South Kirkland P&R, rather than having to make a connection between Link and the 250. Except, South Kirkland P&R is not really a destination in its own right, just a place to switch buses, and every connection one could possibly make there, you have better options. For example, to go to Kirkland, you’d take Link to the 250, not the 249 to the 250. To go to the U-district, you’d take Link to the 270, or simply Link all the way, not 249->255. Unlike previous drafts, the final version of route 544 does *not* take the South Kirkland P&R detour, so even during peak hours, there is no connection to SLU there.

        And, similarly, if you’re boarding the 249 from Medina, I don’t see much reason to stay on the bus past Yarrow Point. Going to Seattle, switch buses at Yarrow Point, or ride the 249 the opposite direction instead and take Link. Going to Kirkland, switch buses at Yarrow Point and take the 255 (no need to connect at South Kirkland P&R). Going to the Bed-Red area, take the 249 the other direction and switch to Link, or possibly, the 226 bus, if it gets you closer. In order to find a trip where this segment of the 249 is actually beneficial, you have to get really niche, like a person commuting from the Spring District to one of the small office buildings next to South Kirkland P&R (and even, it’s only about removing a connection, not making the trip possible).

        The cost of this extra section doesn’t seem like much, but if removing it could save even one bus, that could fund a frequency improvement to another route (e.g. the 270) that needs the service more.

    2. I wrote up a list of zombie loop-de-loops back in 2020.

      The 107 Georgetown loop in the middle of the route has not budged. I’m not aware of any of them having gone away since then.

      1. Do you still have that list? It would be neat to look at the ridership of the different loops/detours to see if they are still justified.

      2. A lot of these zombie loop-de-loops have a surprisingly lot of inertia behind them that makes it difficult to fix. Often, service planners are focused on other routes with higher ridership, and don’t have time to think about the likes of the 107 and 249. And also, when you try to remove a loop-de-loop, there will inevitably be one person who makes a stink about it. And, it’s a lot easier to push back when every bus that gets delayed by the loop-de-loop has 20 people on it, rather than 5.

        Another issue is frequency. If a route runs often, eliminating a detour not only saves passengers time, it also saves Metro money by allowing them to operate the route at the same frequency with one less bus. But, if the route is infrequent, and the number of buses already very small, eliminating a detour doesn’t save the agency a bus, which means it’s not really saving them any more. So, the benefit of the straighter route becomes purely about that route’s passengers, and not about the agency’s finances, so it moves down on the priority list.

    3. 2) is the same happening with other agencies?

      Community Transit’s high capital budget, almost as large as its operating budget, while having a very experienced CEO, might have lessons for other agencies.

    1. Maybe they took it down, but Link ridership data for November is not currently available.

      October Link ridership data has been available for about a month now.

      1. Link’s total boardings of 2,678,000 for November and average weekday boardings of 100,800 for November are there on the front page of the Ridership pages, with a green light on Data Quality.

        That’s a positive 22% increase over November 2019. Of course, Link has had three ribbon cuttings, for a total of 15 new stations, since the Before Times.

        I won’t whine about stuff transit nerds read on the website while real-time arrival signs are showing garbage times and almost-brand-new escalators are being changed out.

      2. @Brent White,

        Ah, I see what you are doing now. I was looking for the real data on page 3. Given some of the reporting issues with data and Power BI, I always wait for the detailed data before getting excited.

        But hey, 122% of pre-COVID ridership is pretty darn good (if your number is correct), no matter how ST got there. Much better than 65%. I’ll take it.

        We will see what happens as WFH continues to flame out and the system continues to expand. It’s going to be an interesting next few years, but we will be in a much better transit place when all these extensions are open and in service.

        As per escalators, I don’t get as excited about them as most of the ST haters on this page. I can recognize a cudgel when I see it. And I still remember the 21% escalator availability at PSS under Metro management.

        Escalators availability has only gotten better since then – much better. That is real progress, and that is what I look for more than anything else. Progress.

        We have three major Link openings coming on line in the next two years. That is a lot of progress, and I can’t wait.

        And I won’t have to drive my wife to meetings on the Eastside anymore. Even better progress!

      3. Lazarus: The escalator outages at Northgate, Roosevelt and the U-District have nothing to do with Metro. And they are not “much butter.” There are constant escalator outages at all three stations, including a massive multi-escalator outage at Northgate just a couple of months ago.

        It’s not being a “hater” to expect brand new stations, which cost tens of millions of dollars, to have functioning escalators. If anything, you’re sticking your head in the sand when you hand-wave away outages as “no big deal” as it shows a lack of concern for other passengers besides yourself.

      4. But hey, 122% of pre-COVID ridership is pretty darn good (if your number is correct), no matter how ST got there.

        Of course it matters how they got there. They got there by building what they should have built in the first place (a train from downtown to the U-District). They also extended it to Northgate and all the way to Lynnwood. This cost billions of dollars. Of course they got more riders.

        Yet ridership *on most of the line* is actually down. Worse yet, overall transit ridership is down. Partly this is because Metro is underfunded but a big part of the problem is that ST hasn’t built the kind of system that they could have. Despite a massive investment, the continued increase in population and tens of thousands of people being forced off the buses and into the trains, Link ridership has only increased 22% since the days it ended at the outskirts of the UW. Link ridership should be way higher by now. It has already covered most of the key areas and made all the key connections it will ever make (Seattle to Bellevue being the one exception). It is not short. The main line is 33 miles long! It wasn’t cheap, either. Don’t be fooled by the “light rail” designation. There are only a handful of surface stations. It doesn’t leverage any existing rail (it may look like an S-Bahn, but all the rail is new). It is basically just a brand new subway line that uses light rail trains. A system that big and that fast in a city like this should be carrying around 250,000 people right now. It should work with the buses to enable them to carry another half million. We spent like Vancouver, but because we spent the money poorly we didn’t get those kind of results.

        We built a flawed system that manages to skip or shortchange our most urban areas. It isn’t the worst system in the world — this being the USA we have plenty of competition — but it isn’t as good as it should be. The worst part is, things will get worse. Of course there will be an increase in ridership as Link stretches further out to the boonies — never quite sure what it is (a subway? commuter rail? light rail?). But ridership per mile will actually go down. Ridership per dollar spent will be terrible. We will be increasingly dependent on an underfunded bus system forced to do the heavy lifting because they built the subway in the wrong places.

      5. What about Mt Baker Station? ST designed the station to not have enough elevators — a mistake Metro never made — and now there has been an alert up for weeks that the “south” entrance is closed.

    2. The November data is similar to October data. Football season is observable. Westlake is the busiest followed closely by SeaTac and Capitol Hill. The Lynnwood Link stations are not growing from October which may be concerning.

      Sounder data from October was also fixed so there’s two new months of “new” data. It shows how Sounder South has plateaued and Sounder North isn’t losing very many riders to Link.

      I don’t remember how many service delays there were in November. Did that affect things?

      1. “The Lynnwood Link stations are not growing from October which may be concerning.”

        It’s only been three months. It takes several months or years for travel patterns to fully change. People one by one have to recognize that Link exists and could be beneficial for their trip, and try it. It takes time for them to realize that, or to have that trip. If their job location changes, then Link might be beneficial, even if it wasn’t when it started. Other people move to the area because Link is there, but they can’t do it immediately because they’re in a year-long lease, they haven’t moved to the region yet, or the apartment they’d move to hasn’t been built yet.

        Sounder North can’t lose many riders to Link because it doesn’t serve Lynnwood or Mountlake Terrace. From downtown Edmonds or Mukilteo, Sounder is much faster. From Everett it’s a wash, and getting on a bus stuck in traffic congestion and transferring to Link may not be compelling. Sounder North’s total ridership is low, so it doesn’t matter much if they don’t transfer to Link. The argument for deleting Sounder North is its existing low ridership, not how many it has lost to Link.

        Sounder South isn’t very interchangeable with Link either. The Green River Valley has a large population that’s closer to Sounder than Link, and will always be. South Link’s current and future travel times to Seattle from Renton/Kent/Auburn won’t be competitive with Sounder or express buses.

  7. One under-the-radar story for last year is the spread of using the available technology for paratransit riders to associate an ORCA account with their local paratransit rider account. Metro Access has been doing this a few years.

    Community Transit has only been doing it a few months, but its successful rollout is what enabled CT to move forward with honoring the Subsidized Annual Pass on both its available-to-the-general-public buses and its DART paratransit buses (effective this coming March 1).

    Expect Everett Transit to feel the pressure to adopt this back-office data management technology in the very near future. Then, Pierce Transit, back under D rule, then Kitsap Transit.

    Fare payment for paratransit riders has been portable in the sense that transfers have been honored for free van-to-van near the county lines. But those riding in the areas served by agencies not accepting ORCA accounts end up having to pay additional cash at least one way, or get the local agency’s paratransit- or intra-agency-only monthly pass. Fare portability for paratransit riders throughout the Snohomish, King, and Pierce service areas ought to be coming soon.

  8. I am completely bewildered by what the transit planners were thinking with the new rapid ride on Madison Street. For a full 3/4 to 1 mile down Madison from end to end the entire two lanes in the middle were empty: this is 2 PM today, a busy Friday. There was one bus in the entire 15 minutes that I was trapped in traffic trying to go 9 blocks. So you had two lines of cars, frozen, and gridlock spewing fumes on a street that used to be a flowing corridor that got you from one side of the city to the next. Also, of course, once you get on the road, you cannot get off it because of the lack of turns.

    What was the thinking behind this and is it going to be like this forever? Why are two whole lanes the entire length of a main thoroughfare from East to West being held for emptiness and an occasional single bus?

    1. The vast majority of the auto traffic is single occupancy. This means a lane of traffic holds about 7 people per block if it’s standing still. If the traffic is moving it’s at most about 5 due to following distance.

      So, an articulated bus with 49 people is holding more people than 3/4 of a mile of typical auto traffic.

      1. I’m not sure what that has to do with the waste of having a 4-lane multi-million dollar road with two lanes kept almost entirely empty except for one bus in each. And the bus I saw today had at most three people on it, BTW. Seattle is a center in a 750,000-person community. This road seems to have been designed entirely for the population of one and a half zip codes, at the expense of tens of thousands of other people. First Hill is one of our primary medical centers, in a city with fewer and fewer medical resources. So people will travel this corridor from all over the county, and for many areas transit would mean 2-3 buses and 2+ hours each way. The redesign seems like unnecessarily hostile transit architecture for those of us who must use the “road” to drive. From the north end to First Hill is 2-3 buses or one bus and a half hour walk uphill in rain.

      3. “the waste of having a 4-lane multi-million dollar road with two lanes kept almost entirely empty except for one bus in each.”

        How else can you get the bus out of car congestion? As Glenn said, one bus holds more people than blocks of cars. Each bus usually has at least a dozen or two people on it. The G Line is supposed to run every 6 minutes weekdays and Saturdays until 7pm; 15 minutes evenings and Sundays. And Metro would have made it 6 minute Sundays if it didn’t have limited service hours. The reason you saw only one in 15 minutes during a 6-minute period is that Metro has had difficulty keeping buses on time — partly because cars illegally encroach the bus lane and sometimes block it from crossing an intersection or making a turn before the light turns red. If this causes two or three buses to bunch together, then the passengers get into the first one and the following ones are almost empty. The solution to 1-2 hour bus journeys is more bus frequency and transit-priority lanes, not refusing the build the few ones we have. This is the ONLY center-lane segment in Pugetopolis, and it’s partly an experiment to see how well it works.

      4. > So you had two lines of cars, frozen, and gridlock spewing fumes on a street that used to be a flowing corridor that got you from one side of the city to the next

        Madison Street was never that free flowing from the beginning. It has many short blocks and then the freeway on/off ramps at 6th and 7th that were congested. There’s other east west roads as well.

        https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/SDOT/TransitProgram/RapidRide/Madison/2018_traffic_study.pdf

        There’s a traffic analysis above if you want to check out the impacts (400+ pages) For most of the madison street there is actually no difference, the travel time impacts are between 12th avenue and 15th avenue. If you are talking about west of 12th avenue, the travel time is actually the same as before.

    2. “ What was the thinking behind this and is it going to be like this forever? ”

      The City knew a few things:

      1. FHSC was a slow snail of a service and no consolation for losing First Hill Link station.
      2. Madison was a street that Seattle wanted rebuilt. They got transit money to pay to build a new street after jackhammering out over a foot of concrete to get to the utilities underneath. Otherwise the line would have replaced Route 3/4 (and served a busier Harborview) or Route 2 (serving less busy Spring and Union Sts), both of which had slightly higher bus ridership productivity.
      3. There were some people involved that wanted something to connect to the ferry, government buildings and Swedish/ Virginia Mason. Many City employees took the ferry to work and saw doctors at those medical buildings. That idea of connecting the ferry kind of got truncated short of the terminal.

      The City transit plan back in 2007-9 (not sure of year) did not mention Madison at all. The the 2013-14 plan vaulted it to be priority one.

      U-Link restructure originally proposed by Metro staff tried to propose a different route structure severing a Madison bus but the City wasn’t having it.

      Metro said to not create the median platform because other bus routes can’t stop there. The City didn’t care and pushed the idea anyway. When it became clear that the preferred vehicle design could not run on trolley wires, the City still would not back down.

      Bicyclists demanded room to bring bicycles inside the bus. This standard length trolley buses weren’t big enough even though the prior service ran fine with standard length trolley buses with bicycle racks on the front.

      It’s a classic case study of ego and steering transit money to accomplish other things. Had SDOT merely added changes on Madison Street pavement the project would have been much cheaper and done much faster, for example.

      These are uncomfortable truths. So some may even get hostile reading them and post a nasty attack about what I’ve stated. But it’s important to understand what I saw happened — because these same factors are playing out similarly in other regional transit investments today.

      1. “Metro said to not create the median platform because other bus routes can’t stop there. The City didn’t care and pushed the idea anyway.”

        How else could buses avoid the interference of right-turning cars? This was supposed to be Seattle’s first high-quality bus corridor. Why can’t we have a level of transit like other cities have?

        Median platforms don’t require left-side doors. The buses could go in the opposite direction and use right-side doors like at the Bellevue Transit Center. Instead of one street two directions you have two streets two directions, with a visually-prominent divider in between so that they look like two streets so people’s instincts are correct. This was another thing the city refused to consider, that would have allowed it to be a win-win. (Center lanes, lower-cost right-door trolleybuses.)

      2. I do not like Madison style routes from a former dispatcher point of view. The route is so unique that it requires a certain type of bus. No other bus can use it. If there are 3 broken 5 door busses, you can not replace them with the one of the other 1000 2 or 3 door articulated hybrid busses for that route. The 1000 is exaggerated of course. You just lose reliable service that day. I do not have a problem with the route. I just know that 12 -15 types of busses cost more to maintain than 3-5. From driver training, to mechanic training, to buying parts and tools. Metro likes to have more specialized or unique busses and routes. So it will cost more to buy, drive and maintain.

      3. @Mike Orr,

        “ Why can’t we have a level of transit like other cities have?”

        Ah, because we waste too much money on projects like RR-G and spend too little money on real transit?

        RR-G is only getting approx 4000 boardings per day. It’s the worst of the RapidRide routes. Even the B And the F beat it, and that is a pretty low standard.

        And the lefthand boarding buses are a fleet management and operations nightmare that Metro will have to deal with for decades to come. And that will drive recurring costs.

        And what did those expensive lefthand boarding buses get us? Nothing. Schedule reliability for RR-G is no better than for any other RapidRide route – only about 80%. So much for the supposed advantages of avoiding right turning traffic.

        Na, RR-G is an example of what not to do.

        And I don’t buy the “Metro as innocent victim” narrative. The buck clearly stops with Metro. They are supposedly the bus transit experts locally. They should have just said “no”. Instead they built an albatross.

      4. Ah, because we waste too much money on projects like RR-G and spend too little money on real transit?

        OK, let’s do a little comparison here. Rapid Ride-G has about 4,000 riders (so far). The Lynnwood Link station have about 7,000 riders. Let’s assume that people are using other stations for the trip back and double those numbers for a total of 14,000 riders for Lynnwood Link.

        The Lynnwood Link project cost $3.1 billion. RapidRide G cost $144 million. So now do a little math:

        $3,100,000,000/14,000 = $221,428 per rider.
        $144,000,000/4,000 = $36,000 per rider

        Thus from a ridership per dollar spent RapidRide G was a much better value. But what about new ridership? This is where it gets complicated. There is no precise way to calculate that. For example Northgate Station has seen a huge decrease in ridership since Lynnwood Link opened but it is theoretically possible it is something else. Likewise it is quite likely that RapidRide G riders used to take a different bus.

        But if you look at the ridership in the area surrounding the G and compare it a year ago, the RapidRide-G and the associated restructure (that was very conservative in my opinion) accounted for an increase in ridership equal to the ridership of the G (about 4,000 riders).

        With Lynnwood Link you have to first look at Northgate Station, which has seen a large drop. It is down about 4,000 riders. This is more than half of the Lynnwood Link increase. This puts the increase in Link ridership — due to the Lynnwood Link restructure and not other factors — at around 6,000 (counting round trips).

        It is clear that in terms of *new* riders per dollar spent, RapidRide G is still a much better value. Calculating rider-time saved per dollar spent is even more complicated but it is hard to see how Lynnwood Link is a better value.

        Yet Lynnwood Link is a much better value then most, if not all of the ST3 projects. Issaquah Link and Everett Link will probably have dollar-per-riders in the half million range. Tacoma Dome Link will be a bit better, but only if they force riders out of the buses resulting a rider-time saved per rider number that is actually negative. (It also means that new ridership will be tiny and we may actually lose riders.) But it isn’t just outside the city where we have this problem. West Seattle Link is expected to cost $7 billion and get 26,000 riders. That is worse than Lynnwood Link. Like Tacoma Dome Link ridership is dependent on forcing riders out of their bus, which again means the ridership-time save saved per dollar spent may be negative.

        In contrast the RapidRide G project looks like a bargain. I’m not saying they did everything right. I think the Metro planners failed to fully take advantage of the change and institute a long-overdue restructure in the area (like this). It is also clear that SDOT dropped the ball in not restricting legal (and illegal) access to the bus lanes downtown or synchronizing the traffic signals properly. But these are problems that the city (and hopefully Metro) will mitigate over time. In contrast Lynnwood Link is done. Frequency will increase and riders will be better connected to the East Side but the stations will always be very close to the freeway (its biggest weakness).

        More to the point, even with all of the flaws, RapidRide G is a much better value than Lynnwood Link as well as almost every major rail project in ST3 (the exception being Ballard Link — but even that is questionable). If a project that stumbled out of the gate and suffers from bad decisions by both Metro and SDOT is still a much better value than a very reasonable Link extension, what does that say about ST3?

        To be it is clear. We should be spending our money on improvements to the bus system. If RapidRide G is still a comparatively good value than improving speed for buses like the 7, 8 and 44 would be a real bargain! If a poor restructure can still lead to a net increase of 4,000 riders what about a really good restructure? What about just running the buses more often (a key element of the G that certainly led to more ridership)? Unless ST has a major change in both the projects they want to build and the cost to build them, the most cost effective way to improve transit in the region is put money into the buses.

      5. It was the Seattle Transit Blog that pushed hard for timed schedules, rather than headways, on RapidRide routes. Metro acquiesced.

        Trying to follow the printed schedule has only made “reliability” much worse on the G Line.

        Perhaps with the spring service change Metro can switch from a detailed (but impossible to keep) schedule to saying “approximately every 7 minutes”.

      6. RR-G is only getting approx 4,000 boardings per day. It’s the worst of the RapidRide routes.

        This a classic example of transit ignorance. The number of riders per route is meaningless. At a minimum you should look at ridership per mile. The G is probably the best of the RapidRide routes and compares well with various sections of Link (despite the much lower price tag).

        But even that is a silly way of looking at things. You need to look at the overall network as well as the impact that it had on ridership. RapidRide G has done well, despite its flaws.

        But if you look at the entire system (including Link) then it is clear that we have problems. We have spent a fortune on various projects and yet ridership is still much lower than it was a few years ago. There are several reasons for this:

        1) They aren’t running the buses often enough.
        2) There has been a lack of investment in bus infrastructure.
        3) We have invested a lot of in the subway system but the flaws limit it’s potential.
        4) The bus restructures have been poor since UW-Link.

        It isn’t like we have done nothing — but we haven’t done enough or we’ve done the wrong thing. Metro makes very timid — and often baffling — restructures. SDOT has invested in speed improvements but they are tiny compared to the overall need. Link has made some very significant improvements but the lack of stations and poor station placement have hurt. But perhaps the biggest problem is just lack of service. We should be spending a lot more money running the buses a lot more often.

        While RapidRide G has its flaws it is still a good example of how investment in infrastructure (and service) pays off. Run buses often and quickly and you get riders.

      7. “It was the Seattle Transit Blog that pushed hard for timed schedules, rather than headways, on RapidRide routes.”

        And we qualified that with when buses are running less than every 10 minutes. At the time nothing ran every 10 minutes except maybe peak hours. It was also before One Bus Away. That made it hard to know when to go to the bus stop without the risk of having to wait 10-15 minutes. It wasn’t just us: other passengers were also saying that 15-minute unscheduled service made the line unusable.

        So when it’s running every 6 minutes, we’d expect it to have headway management. The problem is Metro can’t do either headway or scheduled management reliably on the G now, because it dispatches a bus, it gets stuck in traffic and misses lights somwehere, and the dispatcher apparently doesn’t know it.

      8. Median platforms don’t require left-side doors. The buses could go in the opposite direction and use right-side doors like at the Bellevue Transit Center.

        That would have been very difficult to pull off on Madison. The blocks are really short. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with buses that have doors on both sides. They can be used for any route. You just only open one set of doors. If anything the RapidRide moniker is the problem although it isn’t that rare to see a RapidRide bus put into service on a regular route. But a RapidRide G bus could easily serve a route like the E.

        In general the problem really isn’t in these sections (of center running) it is everywhere else. The buses get stuck behind traffic east of the freeway. This was a flaw with the design. Rather than running contraflow they decided to run in the curbside lane. This has a greater potential of both cars (both legally and illegally) causing the bus to be delayed. But this flaw would have occurred — and been worse — had they taken that approach on First Hill. While I talked about contraflow for this route years ago (on this blog) I was actually fairly pleased with the plans downtown. It would not surprise me if the problem is due more to breaking the law and driving in the bus lanes when they shouldn’t and less about people being in the right lane to turn right (mostly into garages).

        Metro said to not create the median platform because other bus routes can’t stop there.

        Other buses shouldn’t stop there. The 2, 12 and 60 are all flawed because they stop there. They would be flawed with or without median platforms. Just look at the network in the area: https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/metro/programs-and-projects/madison-street#gallery. The G is one of the few straightforward routes! It makes no turns from the start of its route until it has to turn around. In contrast the 60 is squiggling back and forth, wasting rider time and our precious service hours. The 2 seems to have ignored the memo and basically mimics the G for much of its route (instead of helping Pike/Pine with its underfunded spine). The 12 manages to dilute service in much of Capitol Hill, forcing riders to walk a long ways to either the G or Link for anything resembling better than a bus running every twenty minutes (to downtown!). These are all poor network design decisions. The one area where some overlap is quite reasonable is in Madison Valley (between 23rd and MLK) where the bus does not run in the median. The problem isn’t the center running — the problem is poor routing.

        Had SDOT merely added changes on Madison Street pavement the project would have been much cheaper and done much faster, for example.

        And the buses would have been much slower and less frequent. We need *more* right-of-way, not less. The big flaw in the design is that it doesn’t use contraflow downtown (which is where a lot of the delays occur). They felt it wasn’t necessary. They were wrong.

      9. “ And the buses would have been much slower and less frequent. ”

        My reference was that the entire system did not require jackhammering what appeared to be two feet of concrete underneath the street, Ross. That had nothing to do with the bus treatments on the street! It’s not like if they had installed rail tracks. It wouldn’t have affected the operation to have done the same project but without the massive concrete removal under the street that they did.

      11. My reference was that the entire system did not require jackhammering what appeared to be two feet of concrete underneath the street, Ross.

        And I agree with that point. It goes without saying that cities often leverage utility work in the name of transit improvement. But you implied that you could just run along the side and it would be the same. It wouldn’t.

      12. +1 Lazarus. Excellent points. I agree.

        Hard to see why. Let me break down all of his points.

        we waste too much money on projects like RR-G and spend too little money on real transit

        I have no idea what he means by “real transit”. RR-G is a better value — by every metric — than one of the better Link projects, let alone most of ST-3.

        RR-G is only getting approx 4000 boardings per day.

        Yes, for a route that is two miles long. That is much higher ridership than any route in our system. It is also higher than both of our streetcars (and yet has none of the operational disadvantages). Ridership has more than doubled along the corridor as well (compared to other buses that used to serve it).

        And the lefthand boarding buses are a fleet management and operations nightmare that Metro will have to deal with for decades to come. And that will drive recurring costs.

        Wrong. The buses can be used for any route in our system. They can be stored at any depot anywhere in the region. In contrast the streetcars *each* require a special shed and can only be used on the flawed routing which has been built for them.

        And what did those expensive lefthand boarding buses get us? Nothing.

        Lazarus is claiming that lanes used exclusively by transit are no different than lanes shared with cars. This is nonsense. Every traffic engineer would tell you it is nonsense. The corridor is not perfect but it is a lot faster and buses that travel along it are a lot more reliable then they would be otherwise. If anything it is the section that has regular BAT lanes (downtown) or nothing at all (in the Central Area) that are the problem. It is like saying that the old bus tunnel was useless because the 41 was slow getting from Lake City to Northgate.

        Lazarus is ignoring the speed improvements while focusing on the areas that remain too slow. He is ignoring the fact that the speed improvements have also enabled a huge increase in frequency at very little cost. He is also ignoring the fact that the bus carries way more people *along this corridor* then ever before by comparing it to much longer corridors. He is ignoring the network advantages of the change that Metro has only barely started to leverage. The worse part is he is ignoring the fact that this improvement was made for relatively little money and yet it appears to have increased ridership substantially — thus making it one of the best values in transit we’ve built in a really long time.

        I’m not saying that RapidRide G is the best value possible. But it is a better value than Lynnwood Link, Everett Link, Issaquah Link, Tacoma Dome Link, Tacoma Link (the streetcar) and our existing streetcars. It is probably a better value than the CCC as well as Stride 1, 2 and 3. The only projects that can compete are Ballard Link (maybe) and similar (but scaled down) projects like the improvements to the 40. His conclusion — that we should not invest in right-of-way for the buses — runs counter to the facts as well as common sense and the opinion of transit experts.

      13. @Sam,

        Thanks Sam.

        I like to just stick to the facts and keep my points clear and concise. And I’m not adverse to using a little humor once in a while to lighten things up and get my point across. Glad you appreciate it.

        But regardless of what happens with RR-G and Metro, this is going to be a great year for transit. The openings of DRLE and Full ELE represent immense improvements in local transit. There is no going back to 1980’s amber now. I can’t wait.

        And if you come across any news on DRLE progress, please post it. You seem to be more up on the Eastside than most people on this blog.

      14. I like to just stick to the facts and keep my points clear and concise.

        And yet your comment contained numerous factual errors as well as misleading statements and erroneous assumptions. It is reminiscent of global warming deniers saying things like “It is cold today — therefore global warming isn’t real”.

      15. Ross,

        The problem with the left-door fleet isn’t that it can only be used on the G Line.

        The problem is that they are the only buses that can be used on the G Line.

        Reversing the center-lane directions would have avoided this problem, but that ship has sailed.

        That said, part of the solutions for G Line fleet availability include extending the line to Lake Washington and adding similar lines, with which the specialty fleet can be fungible. Was this being considered for the J Line?

      16. “Reversing the center-lane directions would have avoided this problem, but that ship has sailed.”

        Or, in future RapidRide projects, they could put in median stops on the right side rather than the left side.

        Examples below are median running sections of MAX. While it’s annoying to not have a single platform for both directions, it does keep right side boarding. Supposedly it also helps with pedestrian access and reduce vehicle collisions with trains under certain conditions.

        • https://maps.app.goo.gl/n5EaLayP7Ni7mMHR6

        • https://maps.app.goo.gl/FtaUbCiDqXDhxPtp8

        • https://maps.app.goo.gl/MfhUX2herkhWKoAP9

        • https://maps.app.goo.gl/qJaTV25ov3QUxa827

        • https://maps.app.goo.gl/UJLSofAiJvkH7QvJ7

        Note that there are crosswalks at each end, so that you can access the platform using the traffic light if you must, but if the traffic is light you could chance a crossing of the single lane without a traffic light.

        The majority of stations on East Burnside and North Interstate are set up this way due to a lack of space for something TriMet deemed sufficient for a single center platform.

      17. @ Glenn:

        It seems better to me to put in median boarding islands on the right. It’s done in several cities like San Francisco on Market Street and Van Ness Avenue. San Francisco got it; Seattle didn’t.

        Unlike a rail system with center platforms that require traveling vertically and used for transferring between branch lines, RapidRide G has no stairs nor branching lines from the loading islands.

        Plus any bus could use the stop had the loaded on the right.

        The center platforms should have never been installed. That option should only be proposed as a last resort when absolutely nothing else would work — and maybe not even then.

        The thing is SDOT pushed for left-door buses early in the project before the median idea was ever designed. Here’s a 2015 presentation that shows differences between side and center running yet doesn’t offer an alternative of center running with right side loading — only left median loading through the medical office and SU areas.

        https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/SDOT/TransitProgram/RapidRide/Madison/MadisonBRT_FINAL%20Boards_WEB.pdf

        Of course the SDOT know-it-alls were so enamored with visions of sleek left door buses (that look nothing like the vehicles they bought) that they did a multi-year snow job extolling the idea. This by a bunch of “transit experts” who have never driven a bus.

      18. “The 12 manages to dilute service in much of Capitol Hill”

        Again you trash the most useful route in the area. It was the 11; it’s now the 12.

      19. “The 12 manages to dilute service in much of Capitol Hill”

        Again you trash the most useful route in the area.

        How is the 12 more useful than the 10? Between Pine and John the 10 provides meaningful coverage. The 12 does not. It literally overlaps the G on Madison. The stop on Denny is extremely close to a different stop on the G (https://maps.app.goo.gl/YpeJ52Cgcro7a6gB7). Even when the 12 crosses Thomas it is still fairly close to the G (https://maps.app.goo.gl/HSC14N2yxHhNQyv48). Even without the 8 the G and the 10 manage to bracket the area fairly well. In contrast when the 10 crosses Thomas it not only covers a bigger area but it close to places with more density.

        It is really only north of Thomas where the 12 actually provides meaningful coverage. But at Republican the 10 still provides more. Once you get to Aloha though, it switches. North of Aloha the 10 is hemmed in by the park. Not only that, but 19th has more density north of Aloha. There are a number of different ways in which the 10/12 can be handled (I suggested a branch) but it is quite reasonable to do this: https://maps.app.goo.gl/28C712KtK6NXHMGPA. That provides the most coverage and the most potential ridership with just one route. With a doubling of frequency north of Pine you would see ridership soar while only a handful of people would be inconvenienced.

        Consider the stop data. Most of the ridership of the old 12 was on Madison. Most of that ridership was south of 17th (which has now been replaced by the G). Between 17th & Madison the stop with the most ridership was the one at Galer (at the end of the route). In contrast the stop with the highest ridership on the 10 (by far) was the one at 15th & John. There is a good argument for retaining service on 19th north of John. But south of John there isn’t.

      20. It seems better to me to put in median boarding islands on the right.

        Yes, absolutely. But as I mentioned somewhere in this very long thread I don’t think this was possible. Not on Madison. Not without making some really big compromises like having stops very far apart from each other. Give the engineers some credit. It is one thing to suggest that they should have put their money into a different route or that maybe they figured BAT lanes downtown were adequate. But the idea that they never heard of serving median bus stops with regular buses is ridiculous. I’m sure they looked at it and saw that implementing that *there* would not have worked. There is a reason such buses exist — sometimes the street doesn’t allow an alternative.

        This would explain why they never proposed it in the slides. It wasn’t possible.

      21. There is also a subtle advantage to the type of platforms they built. Notice how you can access the platforms from either cross street. For example there is a stop (both directions) between 12th and 13th. You can access it on either 12th or 13th. You can’t do that with this: https://i0.wp.com/seattletransitblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/segment1_busway-1.png?w=986&ssl=1. So the design of this bus stop saved some riders about 300 feet of extra walking. That isn’t the end of the world but it is nice if you can avoid that, especially for a short urban route like this.

        In contrast for something like Aurora the weave pattern is the way to go. The access issues are different. For much of Aurora there is only one place to cross the street. Having bus stops on either side of the street (instead of between two streets) doesn’t really cost you anything.

        Jackson is an interesting one. We could leverage the existing center platforms with buses that have doors on both sides. Then the center lane (currently only used by the streetcar) could be used by the buses and the lane being transit only. That would dramatically speed up the buses and the streetcar. I could easily see both the 7 and 36 having buses like this. The only tricky routes are the 14 and 106. I see either of them having the the same buses, which means they would either endure general purpose traffic or be diverted up the hill (which would offer other advantages).

        Another alternative would be to take the same “weave” approach as Aurora. But that would mean moving the streetcar tracks or abandoning the streetcar.

      22. “It seems better to me to put in median boarding islands on the right.

        “Yes, absolutely. But as I mentioned somewhere in this very long thread I don’t think this was possible. Not on Madison. Not without making some really big compromises like having stops very far apart from each other. Give the engineers some credit.”

        If this was the case, the alternative should have been fully presented and then discarded. As my hyperlink shows, SDOT never even tried.

        Consider that Madison has been wide enough for two bus lanes, two traffic lanes and one boarding platform for most blocks. What Glenn says and what I’m elaborating on is that there was never an alternative presented for discussion that put the platforms on the right. That would only have required gentle jogs and likely not a wider cross section.

        And even if one or two stops required shaving off some property because the street is too narrow, the tradeoff would have been to not have a fleet of specialized buses that resulted in abandonment of trolley wires and use of battery electric buses. The tradeoff would have been even to have side running buses in the curb lane for those blocks. SDOT could have built the project with median operations on the wider portion west of Broadway and side operations east of Broadway on the narrower part.

        Consider too that Route 2 and 12 buses shared stops at 11th and 12th which many riders used for transferring and what got built eliminated that.

        A big general problem with many transit studies in Seattle is that alternatives are rarely more than two — and of two one is usually heavily pushed. They don’t study blended alternatives usually either (like side for one segment and center for another). This doesn’t happen in other US cities.

      23. “How is the 12 more useful than the 10?”

        The 12 goes to Trader Joe’s on 17th and the top of the hill. You can say the G does that, but the G is several blocks away from Pike-Pine. It’s most useful to have a full east-west route like the 11 was. It serves the most destinations and activity centers between 3rd and Madison Park, and is close to the rest because it goes through the middle of them. The 12 at least does it to 17th. It has become my favorite of the current routes.

  9. “The City transit plan back in 2007-9 (not sure of year) did not mention Madison at all.”

    What were its priorities then?

    I thought there hadn’t been a transit plan before 2013 for a long time, and that was why things had fossilized in their 1970s configuration.

    1. The thing about City plans is that they became known for keeping activists occupied, and then being thrown on shelves to collect dust. After the 35th Ave NE fiasco, the irrelevance of the plans became so apparent that the Seattle Bike Blog opined “Seattle Needs a Car Master Plan.”

    2. The City does appear to be spending lots of money on transit streets.

      Just on the 60:

      The City reworked the 15th Ave S / Columbian Way intersection to speed up cars (and make it more dangerous for pedestrians to cross).

      The City is on its 3rd rework of Beacon Ave in front of the station. I have no idea what the City is doing to the street. If there was outreach to riders to ask what they thought of the plans, I saw no evidence of it, on any of the three iterations. And I use that stop multiple times a week. If the City whiffs a third time on the one element needed to improve bus flow — a second southbound bus bay — I will just have to cry at all the money spent just to spend money.

      1. > The City reworked the 15th Ave S / Columbian Way intersection to speed up cars (and make it more dangerous for pedestrians to cross).

        They changed it from 2 southbound to 1 southbound lane and added protected bike lanes. I’m really having a hard time seeing what are you talking about that made it more dangerous?

        > The City is on its 3rd rework of Beacon Ave in front of the station. I have no idea what the City is doing to the street.

        They are adding protected bike lanes on the road.

      2. Where will the bus stops be? Will there finally be an extra southbound stop so the 36 and 60 don’t have to take turns waiting at the light a block north? Or at least move the stop further south so both buses can board at once?

      3. Having now found the page where SDOT thanks businesses along the Beacon / 15th project for their input, I wonder why it was too hard to put up signs at bus stops asking for input.

        I’d love to see SDoTs plans for all the impacted bus stops. Is the standard to have bus islands be long enough for both doors? And the front entry point level all the way to the sidewalk? Will there be space for two buses boarding at once in front of the station and across from the station?

        While I am at it, is SDoT permanently removing any sidewalks?

        I’m all for PBLs, but did SDoT include bike commuters and bus riders in the engineering?

        I hope there is time to make fixes before this becomes a half-baked fiasco.

      4. @Brent

        It’s been studied for 5 years and final design was already accepted

        https://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs/programs/bike-program/protected-bike-lanes/beacon-hill-bike-route

        I pretty sure I provided you the link on this a couple months ago as well.

        It was discussed already a couple years ago and there were flyers on the street as well.

        Fall/Winter 2022/23: Early Design outreach activities — gather community feedback for the North Segment early design alternatives and intersection options
        Winter 2021/2022: North Beacon Hill business district – gather feedback about access and parking needs
        Summer 2021: Neighborhood and public meetings – gather community feedback and ideas about about the use of this busy corridor
        November 2020: Online drop-in session – share the Middle and South Segments options, answer questions and gather feedback from the community
        August 2020: Online drop-in session – introduce the project, share the North Segment route options, answer questions and gather feedback from the community

        I’m sorry but SDOT cannot do infinite surveys and must do construction at a certain point.

      5. Anyways if you and others are curious enough perhaps I could write up an article about it. I didn’t really plan to originally because it’s mostly a bike improvement

      6. “ It’s been studied for 5 years and final design was already accepted.”

        Exactly! There could have been cosmetic changes like a little landscaping or giant planters (it’s a lot of open concrete that makes it feel unreasonably big), but the 15th Ave/ Columbian Way/ Oregon St has been studied to death, had the lanes reduced and doesn’t need changing for now. I get how the protected bicycle lanes stop short of the intersection — but it has been debated for a long time.

        Of the many topics available to discuss, this one seems pretty low in importance — and I live within 1.5 miles of the intersection.

        If there’s a topic in close proximity to discuss it’s Beacon Ave south of jeffferson Park. It has all sorts of problems.

      7. Thanks for the link, Wesley!

        My primary concern is how the bus boarding areas will interface with the bike lanes, not just on this project, but on all future similar projects. The stops in front of the station seem like they will need special attention to keep riders from jumping into the bike lanes without looking, or crowds blocking the bike lanes.

        It remains a pet peeve of mine that SDoT apparently did not talk to itself when it built the median on Beacon Ave in front of the station just a couple years ago, knowing that the median would then have to be removed for this project. From my vantage point, SDoT is making itself look incompetent on that block.

        If SDoT had done more signage-based outreach to bus riders, instead of just “listening tours” and neighborhood meetings (resulting in overrepresented gripes that the bike lanes were being built for people who don’t live in the neighborhood), maybe we could have gotten more stops consolidated. I realize Metro already did a consolidation about a decade ago, and made the mistake of advertising mostly at the stops proposed for removal, instead of at all the other stops where riders would have seen the benefits.

        I also lived through the South Park Bridge closure and the VA loop-de-loop-de-loop. Any bus improvements hopefully being made here are rounding errors compared to those.

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