As Sound Transit wraps up construction of the Federal Way Link Extension, King County Metro has shared an initial bus restructure proposal. Wesley Lin previously covered the proposed changes in detail on the Blog. This post will look at the ridership patterns for the existing routes impacted by the proposed restructure. Metro’s survey on this proposal is available until February 28, 2025.
Route 156
Route 156 has two changes in the proposal: increased hours of service and a minor reroute in SeaTac. Inbound trips to Southcenter currently turn right from Military Rd S to S 170th St, then left onto 51st Ave S. This routing is indicated by the dashed line on the map. Meanwhile, outbound trips to Highline College turn right from 51st Ave S to S 164th St, then turn left onto Military Rd S.
In Metro’s proposal, both inbound and outbound trips will use the Military St/ 164th St routing. As shown in the plot below, this routing (green) has more ridership than the current inbound routing (red).
Routes 164, 165, 166
In the proposal, Metro has split the existing Route 165 into two new routes, 164 and 166. Route 166 will cover the northern part of Route 165 between Kent/ Des Moines Station and Burien Transit Center with 30 minute frequency. Route 164 will cover the southern part of Route 165 between Kent/ Des Moines Station and Green River College with 15 minute weekday frequency.
Route 165 has a clear divide in its ridership near the future Kent/ Des Moines Station. The northern part of the route (future 166, dark blue) has about half the ridership of the southern part of the route (future 164, light blue).
Route 181
Route 181 is an essential east-west route between Auburn and Twin Lakes, via Federal Way. In Metro’s proposal, the route will have an increased 15 minute weekday frequency and will skip the current detour to the Federal Way Transit Center. The new stops on S 320th St will provide convenient access to Link, but will add an 8-10 minute walk for bus connections at the Federal Way Transit Center (similar to the distance between Westlake Station and Pike Place Market).
Route 182
In the proposal, Route 182’s tail will be rerouted from NE Tacoma in Pierce County to the Twin Lakes Park & Ride. The new terminus is shared with Route 181. The stops at the end of the current route, such as 45th Ave NE & 45th St NE will still have nearby coverage from routes 186 and 903. The stops along Norpoint Way NE and 49th Ave NE will lose King County Metro coverage.
The passengers who use the stops losing service (red) will need to use Route 182’s stop at SW 356th St & 21st Ave SW, routes 186 or 903, or Pierce Transit’s Tideflats Runner service.
Routes 186, 187, 901
The current Route 187 path includes two distinct segments: one along SW 320th St between the Federal Way Transit Center and 47th Ave SW and one that winds through the Twin Lake neighborhood on Hoyt Rd SW and 35th Ave SW. In the proposal, Route 187 will be shortened to only cover the segment along 320th St. A new route, Route 186, will cover the Twin Lakes segment and part of DART Route 901’s route. DART Route 901 will be removed.
One benefit of this change is a faster inbound trip for riders traveling from SW 320th St & 47th Ave SW. Unfortunately, this also results in slower inbound trips for passengers on the Twin Lakes segment (future Route 186). The plot below has an imbalance in the number of stops for inbound and outbound trips. Metro assigns an inbound and outbound direction to all routes. For Route 187, these directions do not align with the trip path. Starting at the Federal Way Transit Center, a Route 187 bus travels outbound along SW 320th St. The stop at 320th St & 21st Ave is used as both the last outbound stop and the first inbound stop, effectively operating as a live loop. The inbound trip continues on 320th St until 47th Ave SW. After that stop, the bus turns left from 320th St to 47th Ave, which soon turns into Hoyt Rd SW. The bus continues inbound through the Twin Lakes neighborhood then turns right from 26th Ave SW to 320th St. From there, the inbound bus continues on 320th St to the Federal Way Transit Center, where it waits for the next run. With the proposed restructure, the entire outbound segment will remain as Route 187 (light blue). Additionally, the beginning and end of the inbound segment (on 320th St) will remain as Route 187. New eastbound stops on 320th St will need to be added between 47th Ave SW and 26th Ave SW. The Twin Lakes neighborhood segment will be switched to Route 186 (dark blue). New westbound stops on this segment will need to be added.
Route 193
Route 193
Metro’s proposal keeps one express bus from Federal Way to Seattle, Route 193. This route travels between Federal Way and First Hill during peak hours. The updated route removes the stops at Star Lake Station and Kent/ Des Moines Station (I-5 & S 272nd St and I-5 Ramp & Kent Des Moines Rd/ Kent-Des Moines Freeway Station, respectively).
Based on data from Metro’s 2023 System Evaluation Report (Page 53), Route 193 is one of the least productive routes in King County. The route had just 10 rides per platform hour, placing it in the bottom 25% of all routes. This is lower than the other First Hill express routes, 303 and 322, that had 14.6 and 12.6 rides per platform hour, respectively.
A Line
The A Line is set to receive improved service in the proposal, but neither it’s routing nor frequency will change. The ridership patterns for the A Line were discussed in a recent post on the Blog.
Conclusion
Metro’s proposal largely aligns with the current ridership data. The routing change on Route 156 will provide a more convenient stop location for more riders. Splitting Route 165 and providing 15 minute service on the new Route 164 will improve service for most riders on the route. Route 181’s increased frequency is necessary as it provide a key east-west connection between Federal Way and Auburn. Rerouting Route 182 out of Pierce County will result in an unfortunate loss of fixed-route service in Northeast Tacoma. Routes 186 and 187 work together to provide both coverage and a direct route between Twin Lakes and Federal Way, similar to routes 106 and 107 between Renton and Rainier Beach. Finally, Route 193 maintains a one-seat ride between Federal Way and First Hill.
The coverage, span ,0and frequency of the 182 is disappointing, and appears to be going in the wrong direction. Hourly service, except with minor bumps near rush hour. Serving a small slice of 99 between 316th and 348th with really poor service, and the rest (316th-328th; 336-348th), not at all.
Low marks.
I suspect the cuts to Route 182 were needed to help provide some resources for the frequency and coverage improvements on other routes.
I’m sure that’s right. They have made a decision to serve Federal Way poorly, even the areas with reasonable decent job density and multifamily. Or especially those areas, in this case. 99 in Federal Way has a lot of businesses that aren’t being served at all, including a large hospital.
@Cam Solomon,
“ They have made a decision to serve Federal Way poorly”
That appears to be correct, although I’m not sure if it is because Metro is resource starved, or if it is because Metro doesn’t want to feed more riders to Link. Either way though, it is disappointing.
But bus routes tend to be low investment affairs, and they are easily moved. Things *could* improve in the future.
But this supposed “restructure” is a complete nothing burger. It’s nearly identical to the current route structure.
I can’t remember which survey results I was looking at (probably Pierce Transit), but access to healthcare was in the top 3 for transit needs. People with health challenges often don’t drive or don’t have a car.
They really need to serve St. Francis and DSHS much better.
What would you reduce to serve those more? This is a revenue-neutral restructure.
Heck if I know. The worst performing route in Bellevue or North Seattle sounds appropriate.
It has to be one of the routes in the restructure list.
It doesn’t have to be. That’s an imposed constraint to keep the poorly served poor served.
Or more precisely, keeping historically underserved communities from insisting on some crumbs from historically abundantly-served communities.
For example, let’s take someplace I know: 55th St and 65th Ave in View Ridge. Large-lot, low-density McMansion-central. They have multiple high-frequency lines lines in all directions, including a fast, frequent ride straight to the fastest part of the spine. Once there, it will whisk them in minutes to UW or downtown. Yet they have a redundant second high-frequency line that will also take them to UW without having transfer. North Seattle is riddled with this over-abundance.
Maybe take a few runs from there and give Federal Way moderately usable service?
Northeast Seattle has higher density and ridership, as you know. The Seattle Transit Measure levy is funding part of its frequency. We had to work hard for decades to get a usable grid in place, especially a route going all the way through on 65th. It doesn’t make sense to take a step backward. In case you haven’t noticed, 65th is mostly multifamily now. The Blue Ridge McMansions you’re talking about are a half mile. The routes are frequent (15 minute) but not “high frequency” as I’d term it. They’re the minimum an urban area should have. If I had my way, all those Federal Way routes would be 15 minutes too. But it doesn’t make sense to take it away from one place to give it to another: that’s just moving the problem around. Is Federal Way funding any additional bus service? Would South King County get over its “No” vote tendency on a countywide Metro measure so we could have more service hours?
55th have a 30-minute coverage route. The distance from 65th & 35th to Roosevelt Station or UW is one to two miles, so it’s not a lot of resources, and it’s serving U Village on the way.
For example, let’s take someplace I know: 55th St and 65th Ave in View Ridge. Large-lot, low-density McMansion-central. They have multiple high-frequency lines lines in all directions, including a fast, frequent ride straight to the fastest part of the spine. Once there, it will whisk them in minutes to UW or downtown. Yet they have a redundant second high-frequency line that will also take them to UW without having transfer. North Seattle is riddled with this over-abundance.
I’m not sure where exactly you mean. 55th Street and 65th Avenue is not a valid address. 55th Avenue and 65th Street is close to Sand Point and has the 62 and a coverage bus (the 79). It is also a few blocks away from Sand Point Way which has the 75. Thus there are two buses running every fifteen minutes and an infrequent bus that runs every half hour. Yes, the infrequent bus — the 79 — performs poorly. It is relatively new and my guess is it isn’t long for this world. But the other two buses perform well. The mansions are basically just “on the way”. The bulk of the ridership comes from serving areas that are dense.
Consider the numbers. Here is the ridership per service hour of the routes in Northeast Seattle compared to the routes mentioned in this post:
62 — 25.2
65 — 31.3
75 — 32.4
79 — 13.0
156 — 15.3
165 — 26.7
181 — 21.5
182 — 18.1
187 — 27.3
193 — 10.0
A Line — 41.7
You are arguing that the 75 — the highest performing bus on this list (other than the RapidRide) — be eliminated because it “redundant”. Sorry, but that is absurd. Not only does it perform well but it has unique coverage. The only route in the north end that is a clunker is the 79. Every other bus gets over 25 riders per hour. In contrast the 156, 181, 182 and 193 all get less than 25 riders per hour. The specific bus you argued should run more often gets less than 20 riders per hour. If you want to argue against the 79 be my guest. But it is hypocritical to then argue for buses that also underperform (like the 182).
This is nothing new. If you look at the numbers from before the pandemic the areas to the south performed poorly (with the exception of the A). That is because it lacks density and proximity — two keys to ridership.
It is also worth noting that Seattle pays extra for extra bus service. Thus you can consider the extra money as going towards running the poorly performing 79 (while the rest of the routes are justified on their own right). That isn’t exactly how it works but it is tough to make the argument that Seattle is getting more than it deserves given that Seattle pays more than the rest of the county and most of the routes perform better.
References:
Latest ridership numbers — https://cdn.kingcounty.gov/-/media/king-county/depts/metro/documents/about/data-and-reports/2023/system-evaluation.pdf
Older ridership numbers — https://kingcounty.gov/~/media/depts/metro/accountability/pdf/2019/system-evaluation.pdf
The concept of being “On the way” — https://humantransit.org/2009/04/be-on-the-way.html
Keys to ridership — https://humantransit.org/basics/the-transit-ridership-recipe
Sorry, I swapped my Ave’s and Streets.
Regardless, I agree with you that it would suck to take that service away, but it also sucks that those with likely far higher need have pretty much never had usable service. And people continue to deny them usable service because they other areas have “…higher ridership.”
Well. Duh.
Sending service money from areas with higher ridership to areas with lower ridership is simply going to reduce overall ridership. You can make a “need” argument, but people need good bus service everywhere, and the allocator service cannot devolve into a shouting match where whoever screams the loudest and makes the best sob story gets the most bus service.
There’s a steep hill between the 75 and 65. All the north-south routes east of 15th have the recommended half-mile spacing.
I would still consider the route.182 to operate in Northeast Tacoma.Area like the route 181 already serves the twin lakes park and ride
“those with likely far higher need have pretty much never had usable service. And people continue to deny them usable service because they other areas have “…higher ridership.”
It’s not worth being defeatist. Maybe we can convince the politicians to provide decent service, and people will vote for it. Part of the problem is people haven’t seen decent service for seventy years — before many of them were born were born — so they don’t believe it’s possible. But it just takes a critical mass of good incremental improvements to turn things around, and then people will see the benefits and vote for more. It has happened in a lot of different kinds of areas.
We need to start with what the level of service should be. 15 minutes full-time in the suburbs, 10 or better in Seattle. That’s the level where people find transit reasonably convenient and are more willing to downsize their number of cars. It’s also where transferring becomes more feasible.
We can’t implement all that immediately right now. But we should keep track of where we should be and where peer cities are and hold it in politicians’ faces. With limited service hours there will have to be tradeoffs, but that’s not an inevitability or something to give up on improving.
I’m not being defeatist, I’m being realistic and making an argument that transit can be more equitable, given that I don’t see any evidence that resources will suddenly become Europe-abundant. It’s about access, freedom, and choices.
Think of Rob, who wakes up at 65th St and 55th Ave, and is heading to work at UW. 4 or 5 miles.
– He can hop in the car and be there in 10 minutes.
– He can hop on a bike for a safe, easy trip in 20 minutes
– He can hop on the 75
– He can hop on the 79
– He can hop on the 45 to the 62
– He can take the 65 to Link
Now let’s talk about Sue, who lives northview terrace apts and works at Old Navy on Pac Hwy and 320th, about half than distance to travel as Rob.
– She can drive in 7 minutes
– She can walk for an hour
– She can bike if she has a death-wish
– She can walk a mile to a 30 minute bus
– She can role the dice with an hourly bus a little closer.
So basically she has no real alternative but to drive.
Maybe we take one of many pretty sweet alternatives away from Rob and give Sue just one alternative to driving.
@Cam Solomon
As far as I can tell every key route is getting more service, and the only routes getting cut are peak-only routes to Seattle. I think this is a significant upgrade; currently I don’t think any Federal Way or Des Moines buses run more than half-hourly outside of the A, and after the restructure the 164 and 181 are getting quarter-hourly service. Many of the hourly routes are getting half-hourly service.
Rob lives a few miles from the densest employment/jobs center in the state. Sue unfortunately does not have that luxury. But with the restructure Sue is walking 0.7 miles to a corridor with 6 buses per hour (320th will have the 181 and the 187). Alternately she can take the half-hourly 186 to 520th/21st to skip the initial walk.
That is less than ideal, and it would be nice to get more service in South King, but at the end of the day service hours are limited and King County Metro already allocates a significant portion of service to equity areas (25% of allocation is equity-based, per Metro’s guidelines).
Hopefully when Seattle’s TBD tax expires in 2026 we can get a King County TBD that funds service across the entire county.
That’s great to hear they are upgrading frequency from unusable to merely awful, John D. And I mean that sincerely.
But this isn’t really just an equity issue.
Sue is leaving multifamily apartments, with a fair amount of other multifamily around.
She’s going to an area that is a substantial retail environment, that supports many jobs, and has a smattering of apartments to boot.
Yes, it doesn’t compare to UW. But it ain’t rural. It’s actually moderately urban. It should have service. Pac Hwy should definitely have service. Yet it simply doesn’t below 316th. This is partly because it’s always been that way, and partly because people around there are pretty darn poor, comparatively, and don’t have the bandwidth to advocate for themselves. They also don’t miss what they don’t have. But if the A extended to 348th, it would be well used. If a bus ran at high frequency along 320th, it would be well used.
And for some it would be life-changing. If Sue didn’t have to spend a third of their salary working retail to keep some beater on the road, they could save for college. Save for kids. Save for a house. Instead they steadily rack up debt on car payments and a couple grand a year to keep the beater on the road. It’s shit.
It is completely in our power to do change peoples lives, but we don’t. Instead we give Rob an opportunity to polish his urbanist bona fides and leave his tesla plugged in when it’s not raining.
@Cam Solomon
I think all of King County needs more bus service, but I don’t think shifting service from one city to another is the solution. We need more funding across the board (something like a King County-level transit measure) and we need to stop wasting money on low-value projects.
Why does Rob get so much service? Just because the bus happens to pass by his house doesn’t mean it’s routed to serve him. A block to his east is high density housing; he has thousands of apartment/condo units within a 15 minute walk, and hundreds of those are low income or student housing. Transit is life changing for that group of people as well.
@John D,
“I don’t think shifting service from one city to another is the solution. We need more funding across the board (something like a King County-level transit measure”
I concur with the first part, and I’m not quite sure that the current distribution isn’t already fair. Some of the Seattle service people see is actually Seattle funded per a voter approved TBD, and Metro has a strong equity focus which should result in a fair distribution of the remaining Metro dollars.
Metro is hoping for a King County wide TBD, but with the dual purpose of funding service hours AND saving Metro from their financial cliff. But the timing is tricky.
King County voters are much more tax adverse than Seattle voters, so a KC wide TBD is not guaranteed to pass at the polls. Yet the Seattle TBD will expire soon, and that is critical to Metro’s finances. So if the KC wide measure were to fail, there would need to be enough time to go back to the Seattle voters with a more specific Seattle only TBD renewal.
Get the timing wrong and there would be a gap in funding between the failed KC measure and the expiration/renewal of the Seattle-only measure. Such a funding gap would wreak havoc on Metro operations and financial health.
But with all here moving parts, I expect someone to drop the ball on this. So if I had to guess, and it is only a guess, I would bet that at the end of the day we don’t see a KC-wide measure and instead just see a Seattle renewal.
@Cam — You are ignoring why someone at 65th and 55th happens to have good transit. It isn’t for them. They just happen to be on the way. If you got rid of the route serving them you would make transit worse for a lot more people.
There are plenty of similar examples within our system. Think of someone who lives in a house close to South Bellevue Station. Pretty soon they will have access to the full East Link, stretching from Seattle to Redmond. As soon as that happens, they will also have access to the 554, giving them very good transit access to Bellevue High School, Bellevue College, Eastgate, Issaquah and parts of Downtown Bellevue that East Link won’t serve. They are also close to a major bike path which can take them to lots of different places. They will have some of the best transit on the East Side. Why are we doing all this for the handful of people who live in “mansions” close to the park and ride?
Because we aren’t. The buses are simply part of an overall network. The 554 will make a connection to Link at South Bellevue. That way riders can take that bus from Issaquah or Eastgate and then transfer to the train headed to Seattle or various parts of Bellevue.
There are plenty of other examples. For example the 48. In my opinion it should run a lot more often. It will probably be RapidRide some day. It was part of Seattle’s “RapidRide+” plans before they ran out of money (https://seattletransitblog.com/2015/12/21/rapidride-the-corridors/). Clearly there is a consensus on the importance of this route. And yet if you look at some of the places in Montlake that seems crazy. Lots of single family homes with little density to speak of. Because again it isn’t for them.. They just happen to be on the way. It is for the folks in the Central Area and really the whole region. It is about the network. These are not coverage routes (if they were you would have a point). They are routes designed to work with other routes to gain maximum ridership.
The same thing is true for 65th & 55th. Someone living in a house there has good bus service because they are close to Sand Point. Sand Point has some apartments and is a real destination (unlike South Bellevue or some random spot on 24th in Montlake). But the main reason it has relatively good bus service is because of where it happens to be on the network.
Pac Hwy should definitely have service. Yet it simply doesn’t below 316th. This is partly because it’s always been that way, and partly because people around there are pretty darn poor, comparatively, and don’t have the bandwidth to advocate for themselves.
I agree with your first point but disagree with the second. Metro has shifted focus towards “equity”. This means going out of their way to serve places with low income residents. At times this has backfired (in my opinion) but the area you mention is exactly the type of area they have been focused on. It just hasn’t had service in the past and Metro hasn’t caught up with it. But there are other issues, mostly due to to the fact that it is close to the county border:
1) Metro could run the equivalent of the 500 but that spends much of its time in Pierce County.
2) Metro could run a bus that serves the south end of SR 99 and runs express to Tacoma, but that would be duplicating ST express buses (to a certain degree).
3) The bus could just end close to the edge of the county but there is no obvious terminus or existing turnaround.
In general the routing looks fine to me, the biggest problem is the level of service. Basically Pierce Transit has the area covered but it doesn’t have the money. I have no idea what kind of agreement exists between the counties but this definitely complicates things. King County should chip in more money for buses like the 402 and 500 (since they have a considerable amount of service in King County). For all I know they are, it is just that Pierce Transit is so severely underfunded that they can’t run those buses as often as they should. Right now they run every hour. If they both ran every half hour it would mean service along the main corridor between Tacoma and Federal Way every half hour and service north of Kitts Corner every fifteen minutes.
More than anything this looks like a place suffering from transit inertia and border issues.
i guess i could analyze the bus routes by performance and by subarea bus hours spent if you’re interested. It’d require some guessing as we’d have to make up some categories for each the bus routes that cross whatever boundary drawn.
Though king county metro already kinda adjusts extra service for south/east king. i mean you can view them all here https://cdn.kingcounty.gov/-/media/king-county/depts/metro/documents/about/data-and-reports/2023/system-evaluation.pdf?rev=f6dfbff3c8c241789d8ea41af786dc60&hash=088EBDE82881D6379C72207DC78904D4
the farther out ‘suburban’ bus routes all have very low ridership per bus hour but they get recategorized separately from the ‘urban’ bus routes so they can receive more bus hours.
Also a lot of the bus routes in south king are just very long. they will use up a lot of bus hours even for 30 minute frequency.
@WL,
I think the first measure of “fairness” would be local dollars of transit spending vs local dollars of transit funding raised.
@lazarus
> I think the first measure of “fairness” would be local dollars of transit spending vs local dollars of transit funding raised.
I probably cannot find such fine grained data, it’d have to be broader categories. also it can be hard to attribute exactly as there’s multiple sources of funding. like bus route 150 is that half seattle half tukwila/kent? or is that mostly tukwila/kent. it’s still possible to categorize them based on area but there’s not a perfect metric here.
I doubt i could strictly calculate a fairness metric but more like just in general an approximate of how much we are spending in each subarea and the ratio. Maybe i could attach some estimates of the sales/property tax, though given the higher property values in seattle/east king I’m not sure this would actually help cam’s argument.
also let’s not forget
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/why-are-we-exporting-billions-of-dollars-around-the-state-the-coming-showdown-over-seattles-money/
usually the supposed “spend too much in seattle/king county” are actually exporting money to the other counties
> It turns out King County taxpayers exported a record $2.95 billion to prop up the state’s other counties in 2016, the most recent year studied, according to OFM. About 37 cents of every dollar of state taxes paid by King County taxpayers was spent elsewhere.
> Where did the money go? Ironically the ever-aggrieved Pierce County is the No. 1 recipient, getting $508 million more than it gave in state taxes.
Now of course south king is within king county. But let’s not start with some weird assumption that seattle is somehow “stealing” lots of money from all other regions.
I think the first measure of “fairness” would be local dollars of transit spending vs local dollars of transit funding raised.
That is a bad idea and unmanageable almost immediately. Using that logic you would get rid of public schools. And the police and the fire department. Parents would send their kids to private school and folks would pay for private security guards and fire protection. I suppose libertarians would like that but you almost immediately get a breakdown in society and the economy grinds to a halt.
Same goes for transit. Imagine someone going from Renton to First Hill. Put aside who pays for the 150. What about that last bit of their trip (in Seattle)? How is it fair for someone outside Seattle to ride a bus that Seattle paid for completely? Should Seattle just send Renton a bill? Should we charge more for riders outside Seattle (to help pay for operations)? What about capital projects? Lynnwood Link isn’t worth much without the rest of Link. For that matter neither were the express buses to Northgate from the north (when they ran them). You are either asking Snohomish County to pay for it or you have the same problem in reverse.
Why stop there? Why base it on area — why not base it on actual use. That would mean essentially no public transit at all. All the buses and trains would be privately run. They would only serve areas with high demand or only serve the businesses. Fares would go up and you could kiss coverage routes (and microtransit) goodbye.
No thank you. I think the libertarians make a lot of strong arguments but this is one of those times when they are just wrong.
Public transit is a public good. It is fundamentally no different than schools, police, fire departments or public health systems. We all benefit when it operates well. It makes our streets safer. It allows people to get around more efficiently. It is quite reasonable to argue whether we should focus more on ridership or coverage but the last thing we need is a silly balkanization of the system.
Completely agree, Ross. I’m not sure why they thought I was even pondering that twisted definition of fairness. Or they ever heard of that radical concept of progressive taxation.
But what I’m not arguing is ridership vs. coverage. I’m arguing that Federal Way could very well have decent ridership if it had buses to ride. Particularly buses that had decent span and frequency.
And perhaps we put our fingers on the scale a bit to get them that service. Because even though it might not have as good a metrics as the 75, the impact on riders lives would be substantially greater, on average, than in riders in View Ridge.
Isn’t the 182 getting increased service to half-hourly?
The route 182 proposal linked under “initial bus restructure proposal” has the 182 running every 30 minutes every day including Sunday, with evenings (7-10pm) “30-60”. That means it will switch to 60 minutes sometime between 7 and 9pm, when service ends.
“The revised route would provide more trips earlier in the morning,
later at night, and throughout the day on weekdays and weekends.”
That’s great to hear.
What could be better sane time is keep the NE Tacoma Routing Like It Does Today
I see many more park and ride lots highlighted than I would have expected in these route diagrams. Are they really that used? Are they really going to be that important? With new Link and Sounder garages coming online with a few thousand more new spaces, wouldn’t a rider just drive to one of the new garages as opposed to one on an infrequent local feeder bus route?
What surrounding destinations should be highlighted on these diagrams instead? What’s the best way to show local shopping areas and other destinations?
i suspect twin lakes and SFW park and rides are very, very lightly used. Twin Lakes only serves the infrequent 181. I’m not sure SFW is even functional.
I would think a job location map would be helpful. That’s how I discovered the hundreds and hundreds of people barely served my transit at St. Francis.
Twin Lakes also serves the First Hill Express busses
@Al S,
“ wouldn’t a rider just drive to one of the new garages as opposed to one on an infrequent local feeder bus route”
Yes, absolutely. And it’s easy to understand why: either, a) drive to a P&R and take a 2-seat ride that starts with a slower bus that is also less frequent? Or, b) drive directly to a Link P&R and take a one seat ride on a more frequent train?
Options “b” wins out in almost every circumstance, and my understanding is that this exact thing has happened now that LLE is open.
And there are other factors that tend to encourage riders to drive directly to Link P&R’s. Namely Link P&R’s have a higher number of covered spaces and a better security presence. Those things matter.
But as Link P&R’s fill up, we will probably see an increase in both people doing the Hide&Ride thing, and in people willing to try the 2-seat ride. A service like Link adds a lot of new riders to the system, and that is good for all the agencies involved.
I think just about every transit map shows park and ride lots since they are transit related. It is not necessarily a reflection of their importance. The first non-transit items they typically show (other than the streets themselves) are typically schools. For example the Pierce Transit map has layers for schools (along with each individual route, park and rides and other transit related information). Oran’s maps have high schools, college/universities, hospitals/clinics, libraries, parks/green spaces and points of interest. It lists bike parking along with park and rides.
wouldn’t a rider just drive to one of the new garages as opposed to one on an infrequent local feeder bus route?
Yes, which is a good example of the backwards nature of our transit system. Park and Ride lots have their role. But placing them next to stations limits the potential of the network. Park and ride lots only work in one direction. If I work or visit someone in Lynnwood the gigantic garage does me no good. It is very valuable property that is being wasted on cars. It also doesn’t scale. You hit the limit of the parking garage and you are done. Thus we spent a fortune on park and ride lots that only contribute a tiny bit to ridership and won’t improve things in the long run.
In contrast consider the other approach — regional park and ride lots. Typically these are leased from churches or similar organizations. Thus they are cheaper. You free up the very valuable land next to the station for uses that lead to higher ridership. This is actually happening at Northgate as the surface lot is being converted to an apartment building. You have hundred if not thousands of potential riders that can walk a short distance to get to frequent transit (instead of wasting that land on parking). The small (cheap) park and ride lots are part of other routes. Thus some people don’t have to drive anywhere while other drive a short distance to the local lot. The buses work both directions. As ridership grows the bus becomes more frequent (while the small, cheap, leased lots become less important). Thus it scales. You don’t need a bigger parking lot — you just run the bus more often (which in turn leads to more ridership).
Of course it doesn’t help that they put the stations next to the freeway. It is not a very desirable place to put anything *other* than a parking lot. I’m sure for a lot of people the park and ride and station are the neighborhood. In contrast a place like Roosevelt — which does have a park and ride — is a real neighborhood. There are plenty of people (myself included) that find ourselves going there for various reasons. The park and ride just happens to be there and is largely ignored by the vast majority of riders (as it should be).
While what you say may be true, Ross, it’s not the point of my post. I’m basically saying two things:
1. The diagrams highlight mainly the park and ride lots and not many more things on them. At least schools and other community destinations need to be shown as well as maybe commercial districts.
2. The addition of thousands of new park and ride spaces between now and 2028 should trigger a revisiting of the concept in this part of the county. A legacy smaller park and ride that gets only low demand today will almost certainly be barren in a few years except for maybe carpool meetups. Since it’s usually already in public ownership it makes sense to put into motion a o plan to use them for something else. They will almost become mostly unutilized property.
Of course, the ideal is that no one should drive to a Link station — and should instead ride a feeder bus. That’s not however my point. My point is that we will have a big change in WHERE people will choose to leave their cars for transit and that it offers a choice to do something different with that parcel. It could be anything from a dog walk park to a bus layover to a library to a post office to turned over to housing. But just leaving it to sit idle is silly.
1. The diagrams highlight mainly the park and ride lots and not many more things on them. At least schools and other community destinations need to be shown as well as maybe commercial districts.
Yes, and I’m saying it is on there because it is a transit map. Just look at the legend for the Metro regional map (https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/b165327a8a244cf3b3491020783ffbe4/). Every item there is transit related. It has locations where you can buy an ORCA card because ORCA cards — like park and ride lots — are transit related.
2. The addition of thousands of new park and ride spaces between now and 2028 should trigger a revisiting of the concept in this part of the county.
The county constantly revisits their park and ride lots. They get rid of some, end the leases on others and add some new ones periodically. In Northgate they converted one park and ride lot into a neighborhood park a long time ago (long before Link). They replaced another lot with housing very recently. It appears that they ended the lease on a third park and ride lots (closer to Lake City). These are all lots formerly served by the 41.
This happens all over. There is a park and ride lot on Aurora in Shoreline that will become apartments. I’ve heard talk of converting the Aurora Village Park and Ride lot. Some of this is because of Link but there are also changes in the neighborhoods. Cheap property becomes more valuable. The routes themselves changes. At one point the park and ride lots were responsible for a high percentage of the ridership on the 41. As time went on the neighborhood got a lot more dense and the lots became a lot less important. The county figures they can make a little money by selling off the lot while it it has a smaller proportional impact on ridership. That is why leasing park and lots is the way to go. You can easily just end the lease. Surface parking in areas with low property values is another good option. As the area gets more dense (and more valuable) you can sell off the land. Building huge park and ride lots on the other hand largely locks you into a strategy that may end up being not very valuable in the long run.
RossB, it is true that Metro changes its P&R, but that change is very slow. The state owned two East lots that had low utilization, Houghton and Woodinville; all other East lots were full pre-Covid; Metro could have provided them better service; they did not; now WSDOT has closed Houghton. Metro opened Redondo Heights after an initiative in the early aughts; it never filled until the ST construction closed the nearby Star Lake lot. ST added a Federal Way garage; the surrounding lots have had lot usage ever since. Auburn and Kent are still open, but Sounder took their ridership decades ago. Bothell has almost no service but remains. Shoreline is a lame duck, especially since Swift does not connect it with Link.
@eddie — I am curious about ownership of the park and ride lots. It seems like the state owns some, ST owns some and the various counties own some as well. I’m not sure if the WSDOT list is accurate. For King County I only see Metro and Community Transit (https://wsdot.wa.gov/travel/roads-bridges/park-and-rides). I don’t see Sound Transit (ST). In contrast I think the ST site is more accurate but it only lists park and ride lots that are served by ST buses and trains. For example this is the list for North King and Seattle: https://www.soundtransit.org/ride-with-us/parking/seattle-north-king-county. The default (no asterisk) means it is owned or operated by Sound Transit. You can see that some of the Northgate Park and Ride lots are run by Metro and some by ST. But there are plenty of lots in Shoreline that aren’t listed (but are listed on the WSDOT site).
Of course a lot of the lots are actually owned by a transit agency (or the state). They are leased. I assume the leases are long term — do you know anything about them?
Definitely. Nobody is driving to a park and ride to take a slow, half hourly bus to get to the train, when there is a garage at the train. It would have to be a situation like Ash Way, which has busses passing through every few minutes during peak hours, 15 minutes or better evenings/off peak, and is a relatively short ride to Lynnwood station. And even then, most people seem more inclined to find “creative” parking options or park at other stations further down the line.
What I would do in a re-structure is focus on building out a 15-minute network focused on multi-family housing and business centers within, say, a 20 minute trip time of the stations plus a couple of strategic west – east corridors (e.g., 182 and 164 seem pretty solid). So more of a frequent network near the stations that extends out further in a few frequent corridors. This might require additional service hours, but would more likely be effective, and some of those hours can be diverted from serving the outlying park and ride lots.
I also do hope Route 635 (Angle Lake Station-Des Moines Waterfront) gets upgraded service everyday, with Sunday service added every 30 minutes, for better connectivity in Des Moines and SeaTac, and maybe even extended to Saltwater State Park and to the Redondo Heights P&R…
But with Sunday service added I’ll be more than happy.
I think the 635 is funded by Des Moines, so it would be up to Des Moines to do so. It has a 600-series number like the 630, which we think is funded by Mercer Island.
600 routes are called community routes which are funded partially by local communities. They’re operated by Hopelink iirc.
– 630 is funded by Mercer Island
– 631 is funded by Burien and I think the Hospital, Highline Medical Center
– 635 is funded by Des Moines
Yeah, according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_King_County_Metro_bus_routes):
This series of numbers [600s] is used for routes considered temporary or experimental. Currently community shuttle routes use these numbers. These routes are operated using Metro owned minibuses, operated by drivers from the non-profit Hopelink and partially funded by the communities they serve. … the 600s are also used for the Trailhead Direct shuttle system …
The 900 series are also operated by Hopelink as DART as are the 204, 224 and 773 (https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/metro/travel-options/bus/dart).
I agree with that
Shouldn’t the 193 just get cut entirely? The service hours can get redistributed elsewhere. I’m not really seeing the value here; it duplicates Link (and 150) routing during the period of worst traffic, and the connection to First Hill is already quite good (between the 2, 3/4, and G).
That’s the debate. In most recent restructures and reductions, Metro has truncated most of the express routes but left one going to First Hill/SLU in each area (Northshore, Shoreline, Mercer Island, Federal Way). Metro gets pressure from transit fans wanting to redeploy those hours to more frequent local service, and from residents who say it takes too long to transfer to First Hill, Link is too slow, or it’s unsafe to transfer downtown.
The “Link is too slow” argument is especially strong in the south end, because just getting from Federal Way station to Westlake will take 55 minutes, while express buses take 38 minutes. The north end doesn’t have that problem: Lynnwood to Westlake is 32 minutes, the midpoint of express buses. That’s because of the 12-minute overhead of the surface tracks in Rainier Valley in SODO and the detour east and back.
In the end it’s a judgment call whether an express route is justified. Metro is taking an in-between approach. If ridership is low the first couple years, that can give weight to delete it in the next restructure or recession.
You can give any feedback you want on the 193 or other routes. Metro will use the feedback to make a final phase 3 proposal this summer to submit to a county council vote.
Is Sound Transit restructuring around Federal Way station as well? It seems to me the obvious solution would be just to have the 590 and/or the 594 stop at Federal Way station. There’s already a center exit ramp built from I-5, and those buses are already running at peak hours anyway.
Sound Transit hasn’t revealed its ST Express proposal yet. This poses a dilemma because your opinion on the 193 and feeders might depend on whether any service will remain on the 577 and 578. This may be part of the reason Metro hasn’t deleted the 193. In past Link restructures like Lynnwood and East Link, ST gave its ST Express intentions to Metro, and Metro led a joint simultaneous process.
It’s possible ST has to coordinate with Pierce Transit, and PT hasn’t decided what to do yet. Several of the ST Express routes go into Pierce County, and PT operates them.
My feeling is that PT will likely shuffle around service hours to different routes they feel would benefit from the change the most.
– 574 will either stay the same, truncated at Federal Way, or improved frequency by truncation but with some early morning and late night runs kept to service hotel and airport workers
– 577 will probably get deleted for redundancy
– 578 is the one I’m least sure about because it could either go into turncating the route in Federal Way or keeping it as is.
Just depends on what PTs vision is for South King and South Sound Express service for what they want to do.
“Sound Transit hasn’t revealed its ST Express proposal yet.”
Mike raises a very important point. While Metro can only rethink what they are responsible for, ST routes should be explained as well. It’s an essential part of the planned connectivity.
The other thing I could see be done is splitting 574 into two different routes. 574 kept for the commuter airport runs (late night/early morning) and a new 500s Express Route created for Lakewood to Federal Way to differentiate service. Similar to how 586/590/592/594/595 currently is.
True enough.I would suggest route 193 to extend to twins lake park and ride via south 320th street and 21st ave sw
Routes 303 and 322 are slower than Link to/from First Hill. I expect Route 630 would be as well.
Metro has had express buses to First Hill for a long time now. It is a good choice in a couple cases:
1) If you are running express buses to downtown every couple minutes (because of crowding). At that point running the buses more often doesn’t get you anything. You might as well give some of the riders a direct bus to their ultimate destination (First Hill). For example the express bus along Lake City Way used to run every two to three minutes to downtown. Running a bus to First Hill every ten minutes or so was quite reasonable.
2) You’ve truncated all the buses at Link stations but you want to give some riders a one-seat instead of a three-seat ride. Lake City is another good example. Instead of having riders take a bus from Lake City to Link then Link then another bus from Link to First Hill they can take a bus directly from Lake City to First Hill.
I don’t think either case applies here. The ridership data is pretty clear. While there are some riders from the other places, the main stops south of downtown are at Federal Way Transit Center and Tukwila (specifically Interurban & 52nd). Both have express buses that go downtown. Thus the second situation doesn’t apply. At most you are avoiding one transfer, not two.
Neither does the first case. The 150 (serving Tukwila) does not run that often (even during peak). Same is true for the combination of the 177 and 577 (serving Federal Way). They haven’t come close to reaching the point where increasing frequency isn’t important.
It is worth noting that the plan is to get rid of the 177. It isn’t clear what ST Express buses will look like, but we know that Link will serve the Federal Way Transit Center. It doesn’t seem worth it to provide something that merely avoids one transfer given the high cost and relatively low ridership of this route.
I take it back for your comment Between the route 574 and 594 i would suggest have a new route 584 and for that rout will start at lakewood town center and go to lakewood station via bridgeport way to pacific hwy south to lakewood station and from there just do like 594 routing between lakewood and tacoma dome and finish the route at federal way.
I don’t quite agree with the idea that 193 is poor performing. It is just that the ride is longer than systemwide rides and the north end express. If you look a column to the right to the passenger miles per vehicle miles traveled in the system evaluation, 193 is performing pretty decent
I wonder how the schedules line up between the 193 and the 577/578. If the schedules are poorly coordinate, the 193 might leave right after a 577/578 bus, in which case, the reason for the 193’s poor ridership becomes immediately clear.
To really assess the demand for express Federal Way->downtown service, we need to look at existing transit demand at the corridor level, not the route level, which means, including the boardings of the relevant Sound Transit buses.
We’ve debated performance measures like passengers per service hour vs passengers per route-miles before. It’s a never-ending debate, but a lot of people are against the passenger per route-mile metric because it favors a few people’s long-distance commutes over average riders. Sounder also performs well under that metric, and Link’s Everett and Tacoma extensions. And unidirectional long expresses also lose half their hours to inefficient deadheading. So that metric can be seen as missing the point and overly favoring long-distance commuters, ignoring the needs of average riders who would generate greater ridership and mode share gains.
Even in terms of passenger miles per vehicle miles it doesn’t perform that great. It is at best average (with 6.7). But ridership per service hour is a way of measuring how many people benefited per dollar spent. At best the other metric is saying that at least these riders benefited a lot. So what? I’m sure I would benefit a lot if the bus went from my house to my work. Ultimately that doesn’t matter — what matters is how many people you can serve for the money we have.
If anything what you are suggesting is that riders of buses like the 193 should pay a higher fare. They are being subsidized but because they are traveling farther they will be willing to pay extra. That is quite reasonable but impractical in this case.
re Route 193.
The Metro project is silent on its service to the Tukwila P&R yet it attracts a significant share of its riders from that lot; there may be transfer action with Route 150. Will the lot continue to be served by the conceptual Route 193? Do the planners know the stop pattern?
https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/65c5126e78e56fdf5f559839/671c1495e735546784ac9e03_route-193.pdf
The updated Route 193 would still stop at the Tukwila P&R. It is just losing stops at Kent/Des Moines and Star Lake.
The STB had earlier coverage of this project. Why are the Metro routes being considered alone; what changes are proposed to the ST and PT routes? Do the riders and readers know what they are? Are the three sets of planners coordinating the network? Should all three set of route changes go before the public simultaneously?
Consider that East Link Connections oddly did not include Route 566. Route 544 was not shown to use the WSDOT reversible ramp but Metro Route 256 would have used it. (Now, it seems indefinitely delayed).
The motto should be: we are better together.
Sound Transit and Pierce Transit have not announced their FWLE restructure proposals yet. I agree, it would be helpful to have the full picture when evaluating the restructures. Until ST and PT share their plans, we can only guess what their restructured network will look like.
South Link connections article.
The editors struggled with the ST Express issue for the first article. What we know about ST Express is in two middle sections. In March the suspended 580 and 590 runs will be restored. This is separate from the restructure.
In 2026 ST will probably do some restructuring for Link but we don’t know what. The ST2 planning scenarios in January 2016, Metro Connects, and the Federal Way Link FEIS all suggest truncating all the ST Express routes except the 574. In ST2 it would have been at KDM. In ST3 it’s at Federal Way. We don’t know whether ST will really follow through with truncating all routes. It did in Lynnwood and the Eastside (except the 542), but there’s public concern that Link’s travel time to downtown is 55+ minutes and truncating all the express buses in that case is unacceptable. Which way will the board be swayed in the end?
“East Link Connections oddly did not include Route 566.”
That makes some sense. Route 566 benefits South King, so it needs to be in the context of a South King restructure like Stride 1, not an East King restructure. Or it may be, again, the long travel time between Kent and Bellevue/Redmond is too long not to provide some express-bus relief.
Sounder is fast and reliable; Link is fast and reliable. Route could connect Tukwila station and downtown Bellevue Link. It could be shorter and more frequent. Feed link; do not duplicate link.
Addendum
All the agencies and modes are part of one service network that should be well-integrated and not have too much duplication; we have too little service. So, do not wait for Stride, integrate ASAP.
There are many examples of excessive duplication: Via and Pingo, now Metro Flex, and local routes; one-way peak routes and south Sounder; radial routes on SR-520 going past UW Link to/from downtown; Route 106 and routes 7, 14, and 36 on South Jackson Street.
Earlier in this comment thread, coverage in Seattle and south King County was contrasted. It is different. Seattle still gets 60 percent of Metro service; so, the suburbs are subsidizing Seattle riders. Equity has been debated since 1990; it has not solved. There are large swaths of south King County without transit service. ST3 is not helping.
Looking at the routes near Federal Way more closely, I think the biggest gaps are:
– 183 should get much more (ideally at least 15-minute) service. This is already one of the highest ridership lines in the area, and I suspect it will get even more popular when it connects to the two Link stations.
– I would combine the 186/187 so they can run more often. I would follow the route of the 186 to Decatur High School, west to 320th/Hoyt, south to QFC. Optionally the new route could take the tail of the 903 and continue on the route of the 182
– 193 should get cut entirely, with its service hours redistributed to the above routes. It’s heavily duplicated by ST 577/578.
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