By JASON LI
This is part 1 of a 3-part series on route 8 and Denny Way. Part 2 will be Tuesday, part 3 Thursday.
Seattle needs more bus lanes. Everywhere.
We are in the middle of a worsening climate crisis, and Seattle’s contribution to it is largely driven by personal vehicles. According to Seattle’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory, transportation accounts for nearly 60% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the city. Unfortunately, that metric is only increasing. Commute Seattle’s 2024 survey results have city center commuters who drive alone outnumbering transit riders and growing rapidly.
Seattle’s transit mode share is only about half of what is was in 2019
It’s clear that Seattle needs to take drastic actions as soon as possible to reverse this trend to bring these numbers closer to pre-pandemic level, when transit riders outnumbered drivers 2:1. The most effective way to turn would-be drivers into transit riders is just to make taking transit faster than driving. Red paint is an extremely cheap, fast, and effective way to do so, especially when combined with signal changes to ensure buses can take full advantage of transit lanes.
Adding bus lanes is also particularly important as King County Metro faces a looming fiscal cliff. Faster and more reliable buses means that each of Metro’s service hours can go further and require less slack and redundancy. Additionally, we urge the county to prioritize service over fleet electrification, which is exacerbating funding issues. If electrification goals take precedence, then we risk a death spiral of worse service leading to fewer riders, leading to even more service cuts. If we continue down this path, we risk pushing even the most ardent of transit advocates to resort to owning and driving a personal vehicle.
King County Metro’s upcoming fiscal cliff threatens to result in a death spiral of service cuts
Fix the L8
The Fix the L8 campaign is taking these ideas and applying them to Denny Way, with an Action Network campaign urging city leaders to ensure Route 8 can efficiently serve the city. Anyone who has witnessed the astoundingly inefficient layout of the I-5 entrance at Yale Avenue understands that Denny Way currently is not serving as a road but rather as a glorified queue for the freeway. As a result, Route 8 crawls along the corridor at an average speed of only 3.5 mph and is regularly outpaced by walking. This has earned Route 8 the title of the slowest all-day route in the King County Metro’s 2024 System Evaluation for the second year in a row. And it’s not just a recent issue either; bands have been singing about it for over a decade. Despite this, Route 8 continues to attract strong demand with overall ridership in the top 10 routes system-wide. In rides per service hour, Route 8 has topped the charts during peak commuting hours (and ranked in the top 4 routes outside peak hours) since 2023, showing just how vital of a route it is to its riders.
Route 8 eastbound reliability craters during evening rush hour
It’s unacceptable that Seattle has let such an important connector languish for so long. It must install bus lanes on Denny Way to resolve its speed and reliability issues. If Route 8 buses were able to average just 10 mph, then they could go from Seattle Center to Capitol Hill Station in just 10 minutes vs 20 today. This is over twice as fast as driving during rush hour, and would cause drivers to flock to the bus. Additionally, South Lake Union, the Denny Triangle, Lower Queen Anne, and especially Capitol Hill are all notoriously difficult and/or expensive to park in. This would further incentivize drivers to ride transit. Admittedly, drivers bound for southbound I-5 would not yield any of these benefits, but they are poised to have more transit alternatives than ever when Sound Transit opens the 2 Line’s cross-lake connection and 1 Line Federal Way extension next year (knock on wood).
A map of Route 8 and proposed Denny Way bus lanes
Luckily, SDOT and Metro are already studying the possibility of extending the existing eastbound bus lane at Denny and Stewart (built in 2018) to Queen Anne Avenue, but this study continues to be mired in the Seattle Process. Originally scheduled to finish in Fall 2024, it still does not have an estimated completion date, and it’s not even clear if it will result in the bus lane extension. While SDOT’s hesitancy and thoroughness is understandable given some city councilmembers’ hostility to bus lanes, they need to give this issue the priority it demands and implement this common-sense solution. After all, Denny Way has been at capacity for a long time, and its congestion will only get worse as Seattle’s ongoing population boom continues. A bus lane is the only feasible way to increase passenger throughput on the road; each articulated bus can hold up to 120 people, equaling an entire mile of roadway capacity if each rider were driving alone instead. Issues aren’t confined to eastbound traffic either as the need for a westbound bus lane is apparent during high-traffic events in Seattle Center, but SDOT’s ongoing study completely ignores it.
This isn’t an issue of funding either. The 2024 Seattle Transportation Levy specifically calls out transit improvements on Denny and Olive Way. In fact, SDOT’s 2025 Levy Delivery Plan includes transit spot improvements for Route 8. We hope that this allows SDOT to fully implement whatever treatments it identifies as a result of its traffic analysis. Unfortunately, the larger-scale transit improvements are not mentioned, and the timeline for them is still unclear. We urge SDOT to prioritize this transformational voter-approved project and be bold in its design . We cannot allow this project to follow the footsteps of the Denny Way Paving Project, which is funded by the 2015 Levy to Move Seattle but is still not complete. Additionally, it does not include any new bike or bus lanes in spite of Seattle’s Complete Street ordinance, which “directs [SDOT] to design streets for pedestrians, bicyclists, transit riders, and persons of all abilities” and even specifically calls out that “a bus moves more people than a single-occupant car, so we try to protect and promote transit mobility”.
Although improvements are moving just as slow as a Route 8 bus, we are hopeful that Route 8 can soon turn from a route that’s always L8 to one that’s GR8 (groan). We are confident that bus lanes on Denny Way will result in exploding ridership, slashed travel times, plummeting unreliability, and freed up Metro resources. This could act as a shining example of just how much good bus lanes can do, and we hope that it inspires Seattle to apply the same treatments all across the city. If you want to help the effort to push Seattle to install bus lanes, send an email to our local leaders and consider joining the campaign! We are also hosting a Race the L8 event on July 10th at 5 PM to highlight the issues that Route 8 is facing. More details on that will come soon.
When you say to prioritize service over electrification, you mean to prioritize capital improvements that help speed buses up, not throwing more buses on the road, right?
I assume it is both, prioritizing more buses and speed capital improvements over electrification
I take it to mean don’t throw away existing diesel buses until their end of life.
“Throwing more buses on the road” is a strange objection. That’s just what we need to do to increase ridership and compensate for worsening traffic congestion. More buses incentivizing more drivers to switch from driving would save more carbon emissions than the difference between diesel, hybrid, and battery buses.
The MOST CRITICAL thing is to have a reliable bus fleet, not an early-adopter electric fleet that may have a large number of problems, forcing entire routes to be suspended or vastly reduced for a decade or two until all the electric-bus and infrastructure bugs and foreign rare-earth supply limitations can be ironed out.
The problem is, somebody has to be the early adopter, and if nobody does, then the technology will not advance, eventually leading to a world where Uber, Lyft, and most private cars are electrified, but the bus still diesel.
My personal take is that, if you look at the issue globally, how to build and operate an electric bus system is, today, a largely solved problem, as cities in Europe and Asia have already been the early adopters. The problem is that the U.S. is plagued with protectionism, so we can’t just import technology from overseas. We have to reinvent everything with American companies, who, protected by tariffs, don’t feel much pressure to innovate, and would rather just keep buying more diesel buses forever. Keep in mind here that a battery bus over in China costs less over there than what a comparable-sized diesel bus costs here. The problem is not rare earths, it’s politics and protectionism. Which also gets into another problem I’ve long lamented, which is that neither national party in the U.S. really seems to care about transit being more efficient, so they force transit to be less efficient to satisfy their other ideological goals, be it profits of U.S. factories or general China-phobia.
“somebody has to be the early adopter, and if nobody does, then the technology will not advance,”
They can iron it out with trucks and charging stations.
“eventually leading to a world where Uber, Lyft, and most private cars are electrified, but the bus still diesel.”
That’s not a problem. The issue is buses running that people can ride, not what kind of fuel they use. Again, thirty cars dwarf the emissions of a bus.
“how to build and operate an electric bus system is, today, a largely solved problem, as cities in Europe”
Martin, is this true? Are battery buses widespread in Europe? In a region comparable to King County? (Larger and less dense than most European cities.)
The problem is, somebody has to be the early adopter
Various European cities are already early adopters. It makes sense for them because they spend a lot on their transit system. They already have really good bus service so transitioning to an all-electric really-good bus system is quite reasonable.
We do not have a really good bus system. This is just one example. It is laughable that one of our most productive buses runs every fifteen minutes (most of the day) and is caught in traffic. It is not alone. The 44 runs every 12 minutes most of the day. These are core routes. These are routes that people often argue should be replaced by a subway line. They should be running every ten minutes at worse. But in Seattle we can’t manage to run them that often in the middle of the day. Hell, even after East Link frees up money for Metro service the bus connecting Downtown Bellevue to the UW (the second and third biggest destinations in the region) will only run every fifteen minutes! That is just not good.
We have much better things we can do with our money than spend it on a vanity project promoting our “green” cred. Doing so is backwards and will likely *increase* the amount of CO2 given that most vehicles on the road use CO2. As the author pointed out, in many cases it means someone buying a car. Building a car (even electric) involves massive amount of CO2. We should only transition to an electric fleet when it is cheap to do so and it is quite likely that the best option is to just expand our trolley/battery bus system as technology improves.
TfL operates almost 2000 electric buses as of March 2024. It is not a vast majority to its fleet, but still a significant scale that imply their commitment and feasibility of this path. There is a partnership between BYD and ADL. In the US, ADL partnered with Proterra and delivered 3 ADL Enviro500EV to Foothill Transit in SoCal.
Source: https://content.tfl.gov.uk/fleet-annual-audit-report-31-march-2024.pdf
I would blame lack of competition to US’ slow advance in electric bus, too. The unclear FTA’s transit vehicle specification has already protected domestic manufacturers very well. Then it comes Buy American Act. Transit vehicle manufacture is not neither big nor hot business. It is difficult for several manufacturers to share works with this little of demand in transit vehicles. Protecting it this way only hurt transit agencies. Because lack of competition, NFI could easily dismiss KCM’s proposal of 5-door XT60 for G Line. Combined 5-door feature to XT-60 shouldn’t be that hard.
It isn’t just the buses, it is the charging station (bus base). It will cost about a quarter billion dollars to support the 120 Stride buses. Metro has about ten times as many diesel buses. That might no be much in Europe but it is a lot of money for a cash-starved agency like Metro.
The bus chargers are fine if you have frequent buses aka like say on Jackson street corridor. But for many other streets if you only have one bus route on its really expensive
I agree that the electrification shouldn’t be the priority right now. I mentioned London to respond to Mike’s inquiry about practice in Europe. US doesn’t have the high fuel price that European and Asian counties have. So benefit cost ratio here are very different.
Another option would be adding extra buses where it’s needed the most. The highest ridership on the 8 is between SLU and Cap Hill. When service is severely bogged down and there’s significant delays, a few extra buses should be staged in the SLU or Belltown area and entered into service. Then those buses would be turned around at 23rd Ave area and sent back.
Also, because the highest ridership is between SLU and Cap Hill, Metro should either truncating the 8 around 23rd Ave area or establishing an all new peak hour route that shadows the 8 between Seattle Center and 23rd Ave., essentially creating a route 8-B.
Of course, this would be pending the funds to hire additional drivers.
It would only be a few additional drivers for one route. The issue isn’t a few drivers here and there, it’s a total commitment for the 5% of intended service that Metro can’t operate now, and for more widespread expansions. This 8-B would come under “adding buses to improve reliability due to worsening traffic congestion”. The first batch of additional hours will go to that anyway, to restore Metro’s reliability improvements from 2015-2019, before any increases in frequency or coverage will be added.
This, I suspect, is a big reason why people on MLK are so staunchly opposed to the 8 being split. Part of it is losing the one seat ride to Capitol Hill, but equally important is that, they know where most of the ridership on the 8 is coming from and that, if the 8 were split, they’d be getting their service reduced to fund higher frequency on the more popular part of the line (e.g. a long Denny). I have no doubt that such a shift would be a bet benefit to Seattle transit riders, but still a loss for people who live along MLK, so they have every incentive to fight a split and force Metro to run service on MLK as often as on Denny.
Truncate at Cap Hill Station instead and let there be overlap along John St. For example:
Route 8: Seattle Ctr 15th & John
Route 8-B: Mt Baker Cap Hill Station
This would preserve one-seat service between MLK and Cap Hill, which I believe is needed. This would also preserve service between one-seat service between 23rd and SLU.
It’s not just to Capitol Hill station; it’s the entire Broadway shopping district. MLK doesn’t have any retail except one Grocery Outlet. That’s the problem with single-use zoning.
asdf2: are they many people arguing for the existing Route 8 north-south leg? There are many better networks. The original Route 8 was Uptown to 16th Avenue East only. It would have complemented the Capitol Hill Link station very well. In June 1997, weekday trips were extended to Jackson Square via MLK in a controversial service change. Councilmember Pelz, with hours from the zero based budget service reserve, opted to extend it further to South Walden Street. It has always been pretty duplicative of Route 48. The Gee line process would have been a great opportunity for Metro to revisit the structural choices of March 2016 but they did not. The choices they did make seem to degrade the network; see the G Line and routes 2, 3, 8, 10, 11, 12, 49, and 60. Routes 2 and 12 have not been put back together again yet. Routes 10, 11, 12, and 49 have longer waits. Route 60 is in the congested outside lanes of Madison Street.
Truncate at Cap Hill Station instead and let there be overlap along John St.
Yeah, that gets into the “some sort of restructure (and there are several options for that)” category I mentioned in my other comment. That would be reasonable and could work out well assuming you can find a spot to layover.
I remember someone (I forget who) suggested a branch with one branch going to Madison Park and the other to Mount Baker Station.
Personally I would just send the 8 to Madison Park (from Queen Anne). That might be overkill for Madison Park but it gets decent frequency and it is pretty close. It would also make up for the fact that folks at Madison Park would be losing their one-seat ride to downtown. If we insisted on having service on MLK I would branch the 27 instead. This would mean double the frequency on the core of Yesler (which in my opinion is very much underserved). It would also complement the 48 instead of largely competing with it.
That being said my preference would be to just eliminate service along MLK north of Mount Baker and just run the 48 more often. MLK and 23rd are fairly close together and they are basically cannibalizing each other. Someone in the area doesn’t know which bus stop to wait at if they are trying to just go along the corridor a few miles. There are also crossing routes pretty much everywhere. There isn’t enough money or demand to serve both with frequent service nor does making one of them an infrequent coverage route make sense given the proximity of more frequent buses. Plenty of riders take advantage of the bend in the 8 but many more would appreciate if the 48 ran more often even if they had to transfer to get to Capitol Hill.
@Ross… there’s a considerable grade between 23rd and MLK that is steep enough to provoke numerous complaints from ADA and senior riders. Your idea is certainly efficient.. but I would recommend maintaining a route that runs every 30 minutes along MLK? Similar to what the 28 does now along 8th Ave NW.
As for layover spots…. I envision a restructured 8 to head WB in John, right on Broadway and loop around via the current 60 or 9 layover spots. They could live-loop.
“there’s a considerable grade between 23rd and MLK that is steep enough to provoke numerous complaints from ADA and senior riders.”
That’s only for a few blocks south of Madison Street. The rest of MLK south of that is a flat 5 blocks to 23rd. So you’re talking about a few blocks that’s a flat walk north to Madison Street, which would have more frequent east-west service. Is it worth an entire route for a few blocks?
The MLK/ 23rd grade difference is quite noticeable at Union Street and it quickly gets steeper north of there.
there’s a considerable grade between 23rd and MLK that is steep enough to provoke numerous complaints from ADA and senior riders.
Sure, but you don’t need to walk that way. You can walk north or south (where the grade is relatively level). It is like being west of the zoo. If you don’t want to walk up the hill to catch the 5 you walk across to catch the 44.
Of course there will be complaints but there are complaints with every change. Have a reasonable stop diet and folks will complain because *their* bus stop is going away and they have to walk an extra couple blocks. But the network should not be designed to favor the existing handful that currently benefit from it when it could benefit a lot more riders.
There are tradeoffs with every change. There are advantages to serving this part of MLK. But until we are running the buses very frequently I don’t see it as a solid approach. If we do continue to serve it I think it makes sense to do so with a branch.
But I think what will happen if it branches is that ridership will drop off very quickly. It won’t be able to compete with the nearby 48. Infrequent buses do OK if they have a unique coverage area. But for a lot of trips the 48 is about the same. If I’m at 25th and Yesler right now and want to go to Seattle Central College I’m taking the 8. But not if I have to wait 20 minutes. At that point I walk over to 23rd and take the 48 and transfer (or find some other way to get there). Even a unique one-seat ride begins to lose appeal if there are nearby alternatives that are more frequent. This is basically what happened to the (3)73. People gravitated towards more frequent options even if it meant extra walking or an awkward transfer.
That is the problem with this part of MLK. It is too close to 23rd. You can’t justify high frequency routes on both corridors. Yet a low frequency route won’t provide enough coverage.
The other issue with overlapping the two parts of the 8 at CHS is that it doesn’t fix the problem with the 11. Think of the bus going from Madison Park to 23rd & Madison. Where does it go after that? Right now it goes downtown. It is wasteful. It overlaps the 8 on parts of Thomas/John but not enough to be useful. It isn’t synchronized with the 8 (it can’t be) and there aren’t enough buses to form a spine (even with the occasional 43). It really doesn’t provide much value until it reaches Pike/Pine and by then it isn’t really necessary. Put it this way: If they got rid of it would anyone other than folks east of MLK miss it? I don’t think so. Yet is spends the vast majority of its time west of MLK. As a result, Madison Park riders are screwed. The bus runs infrequently because the bus is spending way too much time providing little value. It would be much better if it didn’t do that.
It would be silly to just end at 23rd & Madison. One option would be to continue to CHS. But now you’ve overlapped Thomas/John again and also overlapped the layover. It makes more sense to be part of some other route. The obvious one is as an (occasional) extension to the RapidRide G. Send every other bus to Madison Park. That would mean twelve minute frequency and a fast trip to downtown for Madison Park. The problem is that the RapidRide G requires special buses and it has reliability issues as it is (extending the route wouldn’t help). The most realistic option is to connect it to the western part of the 8 either as a branch or the main route.
Branching has a certain amount of appeal but I think the biggest weakness is the relatively importance of each branch. I think everyone believes that Madison Park should have service but lots of people (including me) don’t feel that way about MLK north of Mount Baker. This leads to issues with frequency. To get good frequency to Madison Park you have to also add it on the trunk and each branch. If the main trunk of the 8 runs every fifteen minutes (as it does right now) it would mean thirty minute frequency on each branch. That would be a degradation for Madison Park. If the trunk of the 8 ran every ten minutes it would still mean a degradation for Madison Park. The bus would be just as frequent but it would go to South Lake Union instead of downtown. The only way to make things actually better for Madison Park riders is to get the trunk of the 8 below ten minutes. It is quite reasonable to do so. Have each branch run every fifteen minutes and the main trunk every 7.5 minutes. That is great but it means spending more money on service, not less.
In contrast if you just ran the 8 to Madison Park you save money at current levels and if we run the buses more often. The 8 running every fifteen minutes would be an improvement for Madison Park while also saving a lot of money. This savings would occur even if you back-filled service along parts of MLK with a branch of the 27 (at current service levels it would run just as often). If you ran the 8 really frequently (e. g. every 6 minutes) you could just turn back some of them at MLK. Sending the 8 to Madison Park offers more flexibility and is more efficient.
That is a good idea but the main thing that needs to happen first is to make the buses faster. Then, with the savings, you could run additional short versions of the 8 along with the regular 8.
But as it turns it would likely cost more money. It doesn’t make sense to run additional “short-8” buses unless they run opposite the main 8. In other words you would run the regular 8 (from the Seattle Center to Mount Baker) every fifteen minutes and then run the short-8 (from the Seattle Center to 23rd) every fifteen minutes as well. That way riders along the core pathway get 7.5 minute frequency. The problem is that even when there is no traffic the segment from 23rd to Mount Baker is faster (13 minutes versus 17 minutes). So unless you changed the routing it would be cheaper to just run the 8 every 7.5 minutes. Realistically (with today’s budget) you are probably looking at running the bus every ten minutes (midday). If you want better frequency on the core part of the 8 (and I do) then it likely requires some sort of restructure (and there are several options for that).
It frustrates me that SLU hugely densified without a more deliberate focus on better transit access and a fee program to implement it. That leaves us taxpayers to pay for it.
Seattle missed out by not developing a focused SLU transit and circulation plan, funded by added fees on all those new buildings. Those buildings created all the additional trips that now clog Denny Way.
The sad fact is that everyone expects Denny Way to do everything! It can’t.
The city leaders touted how the AWV replacement tunnel would open up new east-west street connections. But they did not take full advantage of that.
Certainly, Denny improvements would help to ease the pain of slow and crowded Route 8. However it won’t solve the inherent shortsightedness. It also won’t solve the rider discomfort climbing Capitol Hill.
The city did develop a focused SLU transit plan: the streetcar. The problem was a bad plan, not lack of a plan.
Also, the city has significant impact fees; whenever the Seattle development ebbs, the city council suddenly panics about lost revenue.
Finally, those shiny new buildings pay significant property tax, which is how we fund most of our transportation levies.
AJ is correct here. Nickels and Vulcan brought a streetcar virus to Seattle from Portland. The Seattle Streetcar SLU line used a relatively empty arterial. The line was too short; it did not quite reach Westlake Station. The line was mired in Mercer Street congestion; the two Nickels Mercer Street projects made the Mercer mess prettier but did not change the congestion drawn by the interchange. About one-half the capital cost came from LID and about one-half came from grants. The service subsidy was cobbled together; some came from Metro. As routes 70, 40, Cee, and 62 were improved, they swamped the SLU line; they all penetrated downtown Seattle and provided better transfers with Link.
Seattle has had two self-proclaimed transit champions: Nickels and Constantine. Each has led us to poor transit decisions: three streetcar lines, Link in the I-5 envelope, and ST3. The water taxi is okay for District eight but very costly. Note that McGinn became a streetcar foamer and messed up the implementation of the First Hill line.
Everybody missed the consequences of adding highrises to SLU: both the city, county, Paul Allen, Metro, Sound Transit — and transit fans. Paul Allen thought a streetcar would be adequate.
When Amazon grew in the early 2010s, transit became overburdened. The city hastily used a third of the 2015 transit levy to split the C and D and extend the C to SLU, and add 10-minute service to the 40 and 70. The businesses were already paying to add extra peak service to the 8. Then around January or February 2016 SDOT proposed rerouting Ballard Link from Belltown to SLU to get high-capacity transit there. It should have planned high-capacity transit in the first place, and Sound Transit should have anticipated it in 2014 when it updated the long-range plan and started outlining ST3. And transit fans should have realized it before SDOT did.
Metro added service to Route 8 and improved routes 40, 62, and 70. SDOT figured out bus priority on Westlake Avenue North.
In about 2017, there was a public process around SR-520 service and ST had a pretty good plan: Route 542 oriented to SLU; Route 545 oriented to UW Link. Recall the so-called Mayors’ letter. The process died due to handling the politics poorly. Also, the Kirkland local routes should have been included to mitigate the consolidation of the radial peak routes.
Denny Way was clogged long before all the buildings in SLU went up. I can remember walking home from near the sculpture garden to Capitol Hill in 2008 and never once getting passed by an 8. It’s been a disaster for decades.
Excellent post, Jason. I agree with all of your points. The 8 is definitely a core route and should not be stuck in traffic. We should add bus lanes and run the 8 more often.
It is amazing that the Metro 8 has the best ridership per hour during peak. Ridership per service hour is probably the most important metric there is. It basically measures how cost effective a route is (or an agency is). If fares are flat (or nonexistent) it is the inverse of fare subsidy. There is a lot that goes into this metric. Faster buses tend to have better ridership per service hour because they can serve more bus stops per hour. This is why it is striking that the 8 performs so well despite the huge delays.
This is generally where an agency will focus their efforts if they want to increase overall ridership. The only additional factor in that regard is existing frequency. Each time you increase frequency you increase ridership but by a smaller amount (it is a curve not a straight line). So depending on the numbers it may be more cost effective to increase frequency on a less frequent route (e. g. the 44 instead of the RapidRide G). In this case the 8 is not especially frequent compared to other buses that perform as well. It is not like the RapidRide G or even the RapidRide E in terms of frequency.
Given all that, it is highly likely that speeding up the 8 and running more buses on the route would lead to the biggest increase in ridership for money from both a capital and service standpoint.
Thanks, Ross!
Michelle Allison (KCM’s General Manager) has said that at some point it doesn’t make sense to keep throwing additional service hours at the route when those service hours just get stuck in traffic, which we don’t disagree with.
I definitely think that Route 8 could use more service, especially at night, but I also think that bus lanes on Denny Way will do more to increase ridership than any amount of service increase along Route 8 can. Thursday’s article will go into more detail on potential solutions to improve frequency along the corridor.
Just an FYI that Route 8 path between Jackson and Massachusetts changes when the 2 line opens in several months. It will be in 23rd between these two streets to run by the Judkins Park Station entrance.
Are most riders west of Capitol Hill Station? This route is perpendicular to my personal travel so I’m rarely using it.
It would help to add in the on-off data by stop to help discussions. I know some of you can easily retrieve it.
See the Ridership Patterns post for Route 8: https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/11/19/ridership-patterns-for-king-county-metro-route-8/
Thanks Nathan!
As I suspected, the route turns over pretty heavily at Capitol Hill Station. 15th (Kaiser) gets riders to/from the east but not so much to/from the south.
I think having the route that I’ll call 8West reverse at 15th and John (using the old streetcar loop) could be effective. The segment between Capitol Hill Station and Mt Baker Station as a stand alone route (that I’ll call 8South) would be very reliable, even with decreased schedule frequency. The overlap between Broadway and 15th would be small. The hardest part would be reversing 8 South buses near Capitol Hill Station.
From there, Metro could add segments from other routes to either shortened 8 route if appropriate.
The overlap is critical so that people in Uptown, SLU, and southwest Capitol Hill can get to the top of the hill at 15th. That’s what a lot of the 8 riders are doing, and one reason its ridership is so high. People are going short distances up the hill, like Westlake to Bellevue, Summit to 15th, Fairview to 15th, Broadway to 15th, etc.
Are most riders west of Capitol Hill Station?
No, but most riders are west of MLK.
An inbound bus has about 1,600 alightings west of or at CHS. It has about 1,900 after that.
An inbound bus has over 2,500 alightings west of MLK and less than 1,000 after that. As Mike wrote, there are a lot of people that get off the bus east of the station (coming from the west).
Given the ridership pattern and the geography, 23rd/MLK is the key point. The vast majority of the ridership is to the west. Ridership per stop (or per mile) is much higher to the west. Just as importantly, it is where the route makes a major turn. Even if ridership was the same across the board it isn’t obvious why the bus should turn south on 23rd or MLK. It is basically a five way intersection. Thus I could see the bus heading northeast (towards Madison Park), branching, or just terminating there (if the G was extended to Madison Park).
For the same reason, stopping short of 23rd would be a mistake. You would be forcing riders into a three seat ride to get from places like Summit and South Lake Union to Montlake. That is a very short trip to be forced into two transfers. Next thing you know you are running the 43 to compensate. Meanwhile the 11 continues to be largely redundant yet suddenly more useful for those trying to get from South Lake Union to Madison Park. It is as if you’ve created one bad pattern to make another bad pattern more useful.
I get that CHS is an important stop. Not only is it a connection to Link but it is a big destination in its own right. It is one of the best stops within Link. But it doesn’t dominate ridership and it is in a poor location from a network standpoint. Buses shouldn’t terminate there (or branch). I realize the streetcar terminates there but that is a network routing mistake as well.
“You would be forcing riders into a three seat ride to get from places like Summit and South Lake Union to Montlake.”
What happens to ST Express 545 when the 2 Line opens across the lake? That provides almost direct service today. At worst, someone has to get a few blocks to a Route 545 stop Downtown.
Isn’t Montlake more of a transit transfer point in the middle of a car sewer than it is an actual destination anyway? It’s the place where riders transfer to go elsewhere mostly. The market is gone. It’s mostly expensive homes and a marina within a few blocks of the stop.
The important nearby destination is UW, which has a Link station — with planned 4-5 minute trains all day until 9-10 pm quickly reachable from Westlake or Capitol Hill Link stations. So someone from SLU just needs to use one of several routes to get to Link.
I can’t imagine that many people are going to Montlake itself to or from SLU.
I wonder if Judkins Park will add to the 8’s ridership. It might get a modest bump as a feeder to Line 2
I’m thinking there will be an increase — but a slight one. It will likely come from people using CD buses to transfer at Montlake to get to the Eastside. Some Route 8?riders will start walking to Judkins Park if they’re close enough to walk. I think some of the other Metro routes near there could actually lose a a bit more riders where people can walk to the new station entrance.
Link 2 Line will certainly be a much faster way to get between Capitol Hill Station and Judkins Park Station (13-15 minutes) than Route 8 will be (25-30 minutes) — as well as more frequent and more reliable.
I’m thinking there will be an increase — but a slight one.
I agree. Some will use the 8 as a way to get to the East Side. But the 8 won’t feed riders to East Link the way that the 7 and 48 will. It covers a relatively small north-south corridor.
There will be some “poaching” as riders switch to Link but not that many. There just aren’t that many riders using the stops close to the station. That may change as the area is developing quickly but that will lead to an increase on Link, not a decrease on the 8. Overall I see a small increase (that may not be noticeable).
The option of using Link to get from Judkins Park to Capitol raises an important issue though. Right now riders in the greater Central Area have only one good option for getting to Capitol Hill and that is the 8. If it went away they would be forced to transfer at 23rd & Madison or downtown. This gives them a third option which would be to take the 48 to Judkins Park and then Link through downtown. For many it would be worse but not a lot worse.
“Link 2 Line will certainly be a much faster way to get between Capitol Hill Station and Judkins Park Station (13-15 minutes)”
It will be more like 11 or 12 minutes. 3 minutes to Westlake, 5 to Intl Dist [1], maybe 2 or 3 to Judkins Park.
Remember, it’s 12 minutes from Westlake all the way to Roosevelt. It’s 13 minutes from Westlake to Beacon Hill.
[1] I thought it still took 10 minutes to traverse the tunnel, but in the evening it’s 2 minutes, and when I looked at the schedule last week to compare Sounder it was 3 minutes, and the time I checked today was 5 minutes.
Whatever happened to those plans to route the 8 down Harrison to avoid congestion on Denny?
King County Metro and SDOT have not committed either way on whether or not Route 8 will stay on Denny or move to Harrison / Mercer. Long-term, KCM has committed to running service on both corridors, but we’re not sure what the short-term future of Route 8 will look like. Either way, we think that we need fast, frequent, and reliable bus service along Denny Way between Lower Queen Anne and Capitol Hill, whether it’s Route 8 or another route.
More details to come in tomorrow’s article :)
I agree Jason. We can’t abandon Denny. There are too many people and important places along the corridor.
> Admittedly, drivers bound for southbound I-5 would not yield any of these benefits
I wonder if there is some creative routing concepts that can come along with the bus lane plan to also address some of those traffic
Are traffic flowing to Pierce county or just south Seattle? If it is the former, I can see a 586 deviation to leave the highway at Mercer and rejoin I-5 through Fairview, Boren, Howell, and Yale. To be more creative, maybe reroute the whole 586 to uptown, at least the 8 is more worthy to duplicate than link.
If it is the latter, maybe a route or two through the SR-99 tunnel will be a great tool. West Seattle, South Park, and Burien all sounds like large enough transit market for some peak trips.
For Rainier Valley, taking the streetcar to link is probably the fastest, but since we are running 9x anyways, we can extend it for a limited stop express service along Denny too?