Month: May 2025

Welcome to the first installment of Friday Roundtable. Each week, this column will discuss a route proposal, provide an infrastructure project update, dive into a piece of Seattle’s transit history, or just share a cool map. If you have an idea for a topic to discuss, please reach out or let us know in a comment below.

Continue reading “Friday Roundtable: Graham Street Route Idea”

Local Transit News:

• Pierce Transit will be fare-free on June 1 to kick off Ride Transit Month (Pierce Transit News). PT is also seeking comments on its Transit Development Plan.
• As King County Metro ramps up fare enforcement, warnings, fines, and “alternative resolutions” will begin on May 31 (King County Metro)
• Aurora Avenue Bus Lanes to Turn 24/7 to Aid RapidRide E Riders (The Urbanist)
• Sound Transit Starts I-90 Testing, Full 2-Line Opening Slips to 2026 (The Urbanist). Also covered by the Seattle Times ($).
• San Francisco’s decision to turn two miles of its beachfront Great Highway into a public promenade remains controversial (The New York Times, gift link)
• Sound Transit’s Stride BRT program took another step forward with selection of a builder for its new bus base in Bothell (the Urbanist).
• New ST marketing campaign implies SOV commuters are zombies following a ‘Mindless Habit’ (the Platform).

Continue reading “Midweek Roundup: Mindless Habit”

Memorial Day transit information is below the movies.

The evolution of Green Man/Red Man (walk/don’t walk display) in Britain. Includes a square-dance song at 9:51. Comparison to US at 15:58. (Chris Spargo)

Continue reading “Sunday Movies: Green Man”

Local Transit News:

• Sound Transit wants to know what would make it easier for you to walk, bike, or roll to the future Everett Link Station (Sound Transit).
• The At-Grade Crossing improvement program continues, with new roadway markings coming to four intersections on MLK to deter drivers from stopping near the tracks (Sound Transit).
• Pierce Transit will adjust its Runner demand-response taxi zones June 8 to focus on areas and times it’s most used and minimize overlap between zones.
• Summer transit is back with Trailhead Direct, the Waterfront Shuttle, bicycle weekends, the Hurricane Ridge shuttle, and more (The Urbanist).
• A Community Transit bus caught fire on Friday, an event so rare it made the pages of the Seattle Times ($). No injuries reported.
• The Washington State Legislature has officially approved WSDOT’s proposed Cascades service improvement plan (The Urbanist).
• Whidbey-based shipbuilder NBBB suggests splitting the order for new hybrid battery-diesel ferries with the Florida-based, lower-priced competitor (The Seattle Times, $).
• Washington appears to be the first state in the USA to legalize speed limits less than 20 mph, paving the way for “shared streets” (The Urbanist).

Continue reading “Midweek Roundup: Summer Transit”

The etymology of railroad and transportation terms. (Words Unravelled with RobWords and Jess Zefarris)

This is an open thread.

King County Parks has announced that Trailhead Direct is returning in 2025 on weekends from May 24 to September 1. Additionally, the service will run on a few holidays, specifically: Memorial Day (Monday, May 26), Independence Day (Friday, July 4), and Labor Day (Monday, September 1).

Trailhead Direct consists of two routes, one from Capitol Hill station to Mount Si and one from Mount Baker station to the Issaquah Alps. These are the same routes as last year, with a few minor changes. Both routes will now stop at South Bellevue Station instead of Eastgate P&R. The Mount Si route also been slightly extended to start/end at E Denny Way & 16th Ave E in Capitol Hill. The Issaquah Alps route will now run every 30 minutes and will start running an hour later than it did last year.

Continue reading “2025 Trailhead Direct Routes”

Redmond Link Extension:

• Coverage of the Downtown Redmond Link Extension opening by The Seattle Times ($) and The Urbanist.
• How Redmond’s 1993 Downtown Plan kicked off its urban renaissance, and how it shows no signs of slowing while a new neighborhood is sprouting up around the Marymoor Village Station (The Urbanist)
• What’s next for transit on the Eastside? (The Seattle Times, $)

Local Transportation:

• Angle Lake station will close nightly at 10pm from March May 19 for up to four weeks to test the Federal Way extension connection. There will be no replacement bus; passengers should transfer to RapidRide A to reach Angle Lake station. The P&R will remain open.
• Some bus stops for routes 31, 32, 40 and 62 in Fremont are temporarily moving for water main upgrades and other utility improvements (Metro Matters)
• The Kitsap Fast Ferries will no longer accept transfers or PugetPasses starting October 1, to “align its fare transfer policy with that of Washington State Ferries” (KT Headways)
• A federal judge has (temporarily) blocked the Trump administration from imposing additional requirements on already-awarded grants in Seattle and other cities (The Associated Press). Sound Transit joined this lawsuit last week (The Seattle Times, $)
• SDOT is strategically placing trees in street medians to block unsafe driving behavior (The Seattle Times, $)
• Nathan Vass, author of The Lines That Make Us, is coming out with a new book, Deciding to See: The View from Nathan’s Bus (The Seattle Times, $). Website here.
• WSDOT got two bids to build three new hybrid diesel-electric ferries: Whidbey-based NBBB estimated $1 billion for all three boats; Florida-based Eastern Shipbuilding Group estimates $714.5M for the same (The Seattle Times, $). WSDOT is evaluating.

Continue reading “Midweek Roundup: “Deciding To See””

Sound Transit operates two express routes between Redmond and Seattle. Route 542 travels inbound from Redmond Transit Center to the University District. Route 545 travels inbound from Bear Creek P&R to downtown Seattle. To celebrate the downtown Redmond Link extension opening on Saturday, this article takes a look at the ridership patterns for the Sound Transit Express routes that currently serve Redmond. These stats are from before the extension opening.

Route 542

Sound Transit Route 542 travels between Redmond Transit Center and University District, primarily on SR 520. In March 2025, Route 542 had 1,256 average weekday boardings.

Continue reading “Ridership Patterns for Sound Transit Routes 542 and 545”

I was going to try to make the opening ceremony yesterday, but I’d walked extensively Friday so I did a shorter excursion in the afternoon. I haven’t heard anything about how the ceremony went, how many people attended, or how full the buses were getting to it.

To compare my trip to normal ridership, usually the 550 in the early afternoon has twenty people, I’m the only one who transfers to the 2 Line at South Bellevue, and the P&R has less than 10 cars I can see. The 2 Line has around 10 passengers in my half car, even in the PM peak. Returning in the PM peak or evening, the 550 has 2-3 more people transferring at South Bellevue, and the bus has 40-50 people on it. Some weekend evenings it’s standing room only, presumably on game days.

This time I left Seattle at 1:38pm on the 550. There were 27 boardings between 5th and South Bellevue. I got off at South Bellevue to transfer to the 2 Line, and twenty people followed. The P&R had a typical 10 cars I could see.

Continue reading “Impressions of Redmond Link”

The downtown Redmond Link extension opens today, May 10. This will extend the 2 Line from Redmond Technology station to two new stations: Marymoor Village and Downtown Redmond. The ceremony starts at 10:30am at Downtown Redmond station. The ribbon-cutting will be around noon, and then train service will start. Between noon and 4pm there will be festivities at the two new stations. At 4pm a “kids’ art parade” will follow the Redmond Connector Trail under the Link track to an after party at the Velodrome in Marymoor Park from 4-5pm.

The Experience Redmond website has lots of information on these and other activities and places to go. It’s worth taking the day to explore downtown Redmond; there are a lot of things there. Sound Transit has a Hello Redmond webpage. Mike Lindbom at The Seattle Times has an article on Redmond”s ongoing transformation.

It will be harder to get to the ceremony than earlier Link openings, because the only frequent bus route to downtown Redmond on Saturdays is RapidRide B. Other express and local routes are half-hourly. A year ago when the 2 Line Starter Line opened, the 550 was packed full every run starting at least an hour before the ceremony to some time after it ended. So if you want to see the entire ceremony you may want to leave extra early.

Continue reading “Welcome Redmond Link”