From June 7th to August 28th, 2025, Pierce Transit will operate its seasonal route 101 in Gig Harbor as the Gig Harbor Waterfront Connector. The service will run from the commercial center in Uptown Gig Harbor, crossing State Route 16, and winding its way up to Downtown Gig Harbor and the waterfront. Fares cost the same as regular Pierce Transit bus service, which is $2 for adults ages 19-64, $1 for ORCA Lift and discounted fares for qualifying riders, and free for children and teens under age 19. Service will run every 30 minutes, running from around 10am to after 9pm (or around 11am to around 7pm on Sundays). That is, on days that it operates, which is only Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays. On those days, however, it is a fun option to get around a very scenic city, in the busiest time of the year when parking is harder to find. Locals will find the half-hourly route a relief from the usual hourly service on route 100, the last remaining regular all-day bus route in Gig Harbor. Visitors from outside Gig Harbor can catch route 100 from TCC Transit Center to Kimball Drive P&R and transfer to the 101, or if arriving on a Thursday afternoon, one can take advantage of one of the three hourly trips of ST Express route 595 from Seattle and downtown Tacoma to the P&R. There is also parking available at Kimball Drive P&R.
Operating in previous years as the “Gig Harbor Trolley” using a bus wrapped in the livery of an old-fashioned trolley, route 101 has been a part of summer in Gig Harbor since 2013 (with the exception of 2020 due to COVID-19, and 2022 due to the nationwide shortage of transit operators). While not as big of an event as in past years (where service would run all week with discounted fares sponsored by local businesses), Pierce Transit is keeping the tradition alive while the agency works to recover from the broader effects of the pandemic.
I’ve used it as an escalator, riding my bike down the steep hill to the waterfront, then taking the 100 or 101 back up to the Scott Pierson Trail that goes over the Narrows. The ride back up has the great advantage of being both hard and dangerous, with not really even a shoulder for ROW. Beautiful town to explore.
If you like beer, Seven Seas has a stunning location. Lighthouse, water, mountain.
Where exactly does the 101 go that the 100 doesn’t? If the 101 is just a more frequent overlay for part of route 100, then it seems there’s no point in transferring to it if you’re already on the 100. If the 101 does go somewhere unique, it’s worth asking why this place only deserves transit three days a week, and only during the summer. You’d think there has to be something for people that need to get in an out of there the rest of the year.
It’s a congestion relief valve that has the perception of being is somewhat more accessible? Welcoming? to transit neophytes. The few roads down the hill can get absolutely gridlocked on nice days. Especially if there is an event.
I’ve never actually taken it, now that I read the trolley-fication description of the bus. The 100 works.
The 101 is basically just a local circulator, similar to the Seattle Waterfront Shuttle (SWS). Like the SWS it only runs in the summer. The main difference is that the Seattle Waterfront Shuttle is free while the 101 costs money. But they are both designed to increase car-free tourist trips although locals use the bus as well.
The routing is mostly a subset of the 100. The 100 is clearly trying to do it all in Gig Harbor and that is difficult. The main thing it does (that the 101 does not) is run to Tacoma. But within Gig Harbor it does not follow a straight path. It goes back and forth to try and cover as much of the city as it can. For the most part the 101 covers the same places as the 100. There are a few additional places it covers but that seems more geared towards completing the route as opposed to adding coverage. For example the 100 does an out-and-back on Borgen Boulevard. The 101 makes a big loop involving Borgen Boulevard which means it covers Burnam Drive (an area the 100 doesn’t cover).
Pierce County is a very underfunded transit agency. It is a huge, sprawling area that is difficult to cover without spending a lot of money. Unfortunately they spend less than the other agencies. In the case of Gig Harbor they get by with the 100 and the 595 (a commuter bus).
The route links disappeared in the article somehow, so I restored them. I thought the 101 ran perpendicular to the 100 and the Kimball Drive P&R was their only meeting point.
Here is a nice system map of Pierce County Transit: https://piercetransit.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=5e122c82aab449f9acf4ce14b596d394 You can filter for various things. Easiest thing to do is deselect everything and then select only the 100 route. Then toggle the “Bus Routes” to see how it fits into the rest of the system.
I was talking to my physical therapist who claimed to commute from Gig Harbor to Tacoma regularly, back when there was regular bus service between the two cities. Apparently that service disappeared, so now she drives. Anyone know how Gig Harbor used to be served better?
Based on page 15 of this document (https://piercetransit.org/wp-content/uploads/public-documents/2016-TDP-Document-092016.pdf) there used to be a 102 that also went to Gig Harbor from Tacoma. It looks like that bus went all the way downtown. It was an express that carried 185 riders when the 100 carried 402. So my guess is it was a peak-only express and not that different than the 595. Despite being an express it may have made more stops than the 595. Either way if you were commuting to Downtown Tacoma it would have been better.
But it also quite likely that the biggest difference was just frequency. The routes look fairly similar. Of course they may have been talking about a time even farther back.
The 102 served Tacoma Dome Station, Pacific Avenue, 10th and Commerce, and then went up the hill to Tacoma General Hospital. It was suspended during COVID and never brought back. The 595 stop at TDS was added to mitigate the loss of the 102.
Going farther back (before the I-695 cuts in 2000), the 100 was an express that went from Kimball Drive Park and Ride to TCC. It ran every half-hour and was interlined with two local routes that alternated – the 111 Point Fosdick and the 112 Peacock Hill. There was also a 113 Key Peninsula route and a 114 Fox Island.
Interesting. Yeah, the loss of access to downtown is a pretty huge hit, as far as crippling usability of transit between the two cities.
The opening of the new Narrows Bridge in 2007 killed off a lot of the market for transit between Gig Harbor and Tacoma. When there were daily rush-hour backups that extended several miles, the commute was more of an ordeal and taking an express bus from a park-and-ride was a lot easier sell. Pierce Transit had even purchased land across Highway 16 from the Kimball Drive Park-and-Ride with the eventual goal of adding more parking spaces connected by a pedestrian overpass. Once the demand for service evaporated, they ended up surplusing the property.
I think the Highway 16 corridor is one of those instances where the county line leads to a rather arbitrary truncation of service. There really needs to be something running all the way from West Bremerton or Port Orchard to Tacoma with a stop in Gig Harbor. Up until the mid-’90s, there was a Trailways operator that served that corridor.
“There really needs to be something running all the way from West Bremerton or Port Orchard to Tacoma with a stop in Gig Harbor. ”
The Kitsap Transit long range plans (from 2022) mentions the following:
1 new Bremerton-Tacoma express route
This new route would create a one-seat ride option between Bremerton Transportation Center and Tacoma Dome Station, and could stop at medical centers, UW Tacoma, and/or other destinations. The route would also reduce single-occupancy vehicle travel between the two cities.
Source: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/09da1c685c8c41c7bcc660d3ec232ae3#ref-n-9TQrY3
I traveled to an event in Gig Harbor from Seattle via transit and the absolute worst traffic of the entire trip was the last mile to the event location on the Gig Harbor waterfront, stuck on Route 100 at 4:45 p.m. around Harborview Drive and Pioneer Way during the dinner rush. The event organizers seemed very shocked that I took the bus to Gig Harbor.
Another question worth asking is if there’s any bus service between Gig Harbor and Bremerton. Looking at OneBusAway, it seems there almost is – the 100 goes to Purdy, while Kitsap Transit #600 goes from the town of Burley, just two miles down, to Bremerton. That seems a shame for such services to have a two mile gap between them and not connect. Of course, even if they did connect, you’ve still got the problem that there’s only one round trip per day, which leaves Burley at 6 AM, and the 100 doesn’t run quite early enough. But, that’s another issue.
Still, it seems as though Pierce Transit and Kitsap Transit ought to get together and work out something. It should not be necessary to backtrack all the way to downtown Seattle and ride the ferry (3 hours total, according to Google) for what’s only a 30 minute drive by car.
There is the Purdy Ride that acts somewhat like a peak hour DART service
On the other hand, the 600s are Worker/Driver route for the shipyard that afaik no one really knows how to ride as a general public