Bus Improvements on Harrison, but Will There be Buses?

49 Replies to “Bus Improvements on Harrison, but Will There be Buses?”

1. Martin: great piece; it is timely. You point out several strategic flaws. SDOT saw a bus route on Harrison Street in Metro Connects. SDOT asked the PSRC for planning funds. The Metro Connects service is not funded; it seems unlikely to be funded soon. There is also the operator constraint to address. Sometimes the Metro Connects service network goes against the Metro service guidelines. Here SG five is about route spacing; Denny Way and Harrison Street are quite close. Ridership would be maximized by wider spacing and shorter waits. How can SDOT move transit well on a two-lane Harrison Street when it cannot do so on a four-lane Denny Way? ST3 Link will be delayed at best. Denny Way is supposed to have a station, so the current Route 8 will be proximate with Link. SDOT has several existing arterials that need pavement management; does it need a new one? The Eastlake Layover Facility is not a destination for riders; it addresses the curb space issue in the north CBD just as it will disappear with restructures around ST2 Link. The SR-520 reversible ramp is delayed and is one way.

   1. Is there a more well-spaced alternative? Roy could maybe work if there was a crossing at Aurora?

      I could see Harrison being mostly clear of vehicles with a few forced turns (ex: all traffic except buses must turn right on Westlake and Fairview).

   2. Roy works either way but would be fantastic if it involved a crossing of Aurora (not Harrison). Either way I would send the Boren bus that way (see option 3 below). With a crossing or Aurora that would mean Mount Baker/Boren/Fairview/Roy. A bus from Mount Baker would make only one real turn (left on Roy/Valley) until it got to Uptown.

2. What I am not sure about this is MetroConnect sends routes that are 19/24 today to W Mercer Pl. 24/33 is faster than D Line from Belltown to Interbay today because unlike D Line, they avoid Mercer Street and bypass core part of Lower Queen Anne.
   Rerouting them to Harrison and end the routes in SLU might benefit trips from Magnolia to SLU and Capitol Hill by slightly sacrifice Magnolia to Downtown Seattle.

   1. ST3 has Link in Interbay to carry the CBD load. It may be many years away.

      1. Yeah I agree after that it won’t be much of problem.

      2. After that, my guess is the only buses from Magnolia will go to the UW.

3. Great to hear from you Martin!

   This concept, which has been cooking for a while, appears to be to consolidate most of the future E/W bus service in the area other than Metro L8 off of chronically congested Denny Way, in such a way as to connect to RapidRide and future Link routes (that we can’t really afford? But that’s another topic.) In the long run, I guess the thinking is a lot of people would transfer to Link to get the last mile downtown?

   I get that the route has to jog to use the street grid, to interface directly with RapidRide at Fairview. Still, it won’t be that fast, even with some improvements.

   I don’t think this concept, whatever its merits, is any reason to give up on Denny Way, which looks like it needs more bus lanes and fewer vehicles lined up to go to I-5. Denny Way will always serve a unique role in Seattle’s street grid because of the way it’s laid out.

   In the big picture, the whole transit strategy for SLU seems reactive instead of proactive, with the single exception of the SLUT, whose utility has mostly been to spur development (mission accomplished!) Why weren’t the transit lanes the first thing to go in when there was no traffic to displace?

   What I’d really like to see is a ped bridge from the east end of this pathway to the west slope of Capitol Hill, with an elevator assist. Then the east end of this pathway would have more of a reason to exist, beyond the new Eastlake bus staging area.

   1. “What I’d really like to see is a ped bridge from the east end of this pathway to the west slope of Capitol Hill, with an elevator assist.”

      Addressing the vertical challenges between SLU and Capitol Hill remains an ignored and unstudied topic. I agree that we need to “go there” — and I think a focused effort to plan for something needs to begin as soon as possible.

      The topic needs to be addressed for Harborview too.

      It’s a failure of two-dimensional maps to reflect the challenge visually to those not making this trip. But those working to develop better transit connectivity should quit ignoring the need. It’s just as much if not a bigger challenge than merely getting across SLU on more walkable terrain.

      There have been many speculative ways on how to make this a reality mentioned in post comments over the years. But they’ve always been personal speculation. No agency has seen fit to approach the need with a comprehensive study. Perhaps that’s because the solution isn’t obvious — technically or politically. But this is precisely why a study looking at a wide range of corridors and technologies would be so valuable! It’s time we start having more transit studies that aren’t done with a pre-ordained conclusion (like alternatives that don’t significantly vary by mode).

      1. I agree. As an interim, this route could continue across the Lakeview Bridge and then across to Broadway.

      2. Al: frequent bus service on Yale Way, 8th/9th avenues, and East Jefferson Street would serve Yesler Terrace , Harborview, Swedish, and SU. I suggest routes 40 and 62 be extended to Juvenile Justice.

      3. Typo: Yesler Way

   2. “consolidate most of the future E/W bus service in the area other than Metro L8 off of chronically congested Denny Way”

      What other east-west bus service? A faster 8 is all you need. The other concepts Metro has suggested like upper Queen Anne or Magnolia to Capitol Hill/CD are secondary, so it’s less important if they exist or are slower. You just need a good east-west corridor, and the 8 in some form is it.

   3. “chronically congested Denny Way”

      The mega congestion is mostly because of the freeway entrance, as cars crowd up to get onto I-5. So just close the entrance.

      1. Better still, close Yale south of Denny. Howell can stay given over to the freeway traffic; it doesn’t play an important role in the street grid. And, I’m concerned that without an I-5 south entrance between Mercer and Seneca, we’ll have even more cars queueing up for those two streets.

   4. “Denny Way will always serve a unique role in Seattle’s street grid”

      A major issue is destinations closer to Denny than Harrison, and destinations south of Denny. A Harrison corridor can never serve those well. Denny is also the closest access point to the Sculpture Park area and the highrises on Elliott and Western Avenues in Belltown, since there’s not transit there.

   5. There’s not much that can be done about it, but the ultimate cause of a lot of these problems (beyond the geography and hills, which were always there) is the existence of I-5 cutting off the east-west road network. Denny is a mess in large part because it’s the only road that crosses the freeway.

4. Is the 1061 meant to represent RR D, or…?

   I had (or read) an idea for the 8 to stay on the Harrison corridor, cross the Lakeview Bridge, and then use the Bellevue/Summit corridor to get back to Denny/Olive/John, providing that corridor with transit access without being at the end of a stump of a route. That might work as at least a stopgap while waiting for Link to get built.

   1. I believe it is a combination of 11 (Madison Park -Capitol Hill), 8 (Capitol Hill-Lower Queen Anne but without taking Denny Way the entire way), and D (south of Ballard Bridge).

   2. Lots of turns slow buses down.

      1. Exactly! It seems that the alternative that won’t be studied is how to put in a different street (or pair of one-way streets) for autos while converting Denny for buses only. And for a bus alternative on Harrison there should be almost no turns (rather than the 4 shown plus more at each end of the corridor not shown).

         Sometimes I feel like all the SDOT traffic engineers laying out these things should first be required to learn how drive a bus around Seattle for awhile to better understand what they’re creating. It’s seemingly just drawings to them.

   3. The 1061 (RapidRide candidate) is a concept that subsumes parts of the D, 8 (with Harrison reroute), and 11. (You’ll have to click off the preselected route and select the 1061; I can’t get rid of the preselect for some reason.)

      A 1074 would stay on Denny, and function like an extension of the 106 to Boren, Denny, Uptown, and Smith Cove, like the Boren concepts in the August 1st roundtable. The other end of the 106 would be truncated at Rainer Beach. Another route 1075 would take over the rest of the 106/105, starting from Othello station to downtown Renton and the Highlands.

      1. “I can’t get rid of the preselect for some reason.)”

         Click the pre-selected route again to unselect. Then you will see all the routes.

      2. “A 1074 would stay on Denny, and function like an extension of the 106”

         I wonder if they are still seriously considering operating this proposed 1074.
         In MetroConnect’s appendices, it lists 1074 as something modified from Route 38. 38 is predecessor of 106, right?

      3. “Click the pre-selected route again to unselect. Then you will see all the routes.”

         Yes, that’s what you have to do if you follow the link. What I want to do is have the link not preselect it in the first place. But I can’t seem to get rid of it. It happens to me when I click the 2050 link in the Metro Connects Concepts article, which is how I get to the map. I don’t think it initially did, or that I wouldn’t have noticed it when I published the article. So it must have stated later. There’s nothing in the URL to suggest it’s preselecting another route.

      4. Someone with editing access to this probably forgot to turn off the filter before saving this.
         I am surprised there are still editing activities in this particular version that was shared with MetroConnect documentation on these days. Have we noticed any change?

      5. The Metro Connects maps were published between 2016 and 2020. It was Metro’s answer to what kind of bus routes could be around future Link stations for the ST3 vote. In 2020 the maps were taken off the site and I thought Metro was keeping them non-public or had abandoned them.

         It was frustrating for years because we no longer had any idea what Metro planners favored. Did it still support the 2020 concepts? Had new ideas superceded some of them? Would it or would it not implement them? We had to guess in the dark, and we had to go by our memories of what the 2020 map had been.

         In 2024 somebody found the later live maps at this Remix map site. I wrote the article so that we could find the maps again later as a reference.

         I don’t remember all the details of the 2020 version to say how much it has changed, but I do remember some particular routes that have changed. And I think it’s still being updated and has some differences from 2024.

         One change is the 48-Rainier route is no longer there. Metro was going to truncate the 7 at Mt Baker and reassign the southern part to the 48. Later both SDOT and Metro turned against that idea, and Metro removed it from the map. The RapidRide 7 upgrade now being planned keeps it on Rainier to Rainier Beach.

         The ones we’ve been most curious about are still there: 1061 (Denny-Madison), 1064 (Broadway north-south), 1074 (MLK-Boren-Uptown).

         It seems to be updated only occasionally because it doesn’t have the latest decisions; e.g., the 3096 (226) doesn’t show the change to all 164th and the South Bellevue extension), or to improve the 36 corridor rather than combining it with the 49 and not going downtown, or route 75 not staying on 125th/130th to Shoreline CC in the Lynnwood Link restructure. And it doesn’t have new tentative ideas that are still undecided, like whether RapidRide 150 (1049) should terminate at Rainier Beach or go on I-5 and 4th Ave S to downtown.

         Although this is intended as a future vision in thirty years, not for current restructures, so it can’t show both a Broadway north-south route and a route 36 upgrade since they contradict each other. So it may be that Metro is still thinking about a Denny-Madison route someday, a Broadway north-south route, and a 75 to Shoreline CC when/if it gets more service hours and opposition is overcome.

         I asked Metro planners about the Denny-Madison route when I saw them at the Shoreline North opening. I said we were assuming it would happen in the RapiRide G restructure but then it didn’t. I asked what it was waiting for or if it had been abandoned. They said they were still thinking about it and might implement it someday, but there’s nothing definite. So that may still apply to the Broadway north-south corridor and 125th/130th. I can’t see the 77 as a permanent solution: it seems like a temporary expedient to use the fewest service hours.

      6. I have long interpreted the Metro Connects maps as conceptual and not completely literal. Metro needs to show how their route structure is envisioned to change in the long run (Post-ST3) to determine things like maintenance facility sizes, operating subsidies needed and vehicle purchases (type and number). Because the routes have not been vetted through community review, they are subject to change.

         The period between 2016 and 2026 is transformational for the region’s transit service structure. Even ST3 completion won’t be as profound. The new reality has needed a vision like this. However, I suspect future Metro Connects maps won’t be as radically insightful in the future.

      7. What we’d ideally need is that comprehensive regional+local vision I was talking about. A politician articulates an excellent general goal, the public says OK, they hire experts to help design a regional+local network for the tri-county area with phases, the public says OK, then each phase goes through refinement and vetting (while adhering to transit best practices), the public says OK, and the agency implements them. At some point you switch from public votes on everything to the agency making more of the decisions (because it’s a proven good agency). This is more like what happens in other countries.

         We’re missing:
         – A politician championing a vision based on transit best practices.
         – An agency making decisions based on transit best practices (that says no to things bad for passengers).
         – ST and Metro hiring transit network experts to make their long-range plans and restructures.
         – A unified regional+local approach. (Either replacing ST and the local agencies, or ST doing network-design work on their behalf.)
         – Adequate funding for the local transit agencies (or the single agency) to bring local service up to international standards.
         – Passenger advocates the agency listens to.
         – And probably more.

         Instead we ST with a weird structure believing its mandate is an Everett-Tacoma-Redmond 55 mph light rail spine, and whatever subarea county/city officials want (even though they’re not transit experts), regional network defined separately than local networks and sometimes at odds with them, nonsensical Link decisions based on non-transit factors, local agencies who don’t have the resources to make a really good network, and Metro making questionable planning decisions since 2020.
         –

5. I think it’s important to add a footnote about SLU having any Link station by 2039. Even though that’s the official year, the current opening date listed is December 31.

   More importantly, ST has not presented an updated cost and schedule. Those are due imminently with the new EIS release. It’s widely understood that the excessive cost of the project is unaffordable. And it’s highly doubtful that constructing this complex project can get underway by 2028 as ST now reports.

   A component of the Ballard Link project is for deep station vault boxes that will take years to excavate and build. If a station vault is needed in this corridor, it really complicates the ability to operate buses on it. If the money is miraculously available in time to keep the schedule, surely the construction period will take longer.

   I think it’s important to not let the current Ballard Link schedule to overshadow the need to offer better east-west transit across SLU. It’s needed now! Link doesn’t directly relieve these bus routes anyway. Mentioning it leaves open the door to delaying the bus project to coincide with unaffordable Link construction, which to me is a terrible idea.

   1. So, the obvious answer is a better Route 8: close or make Yale Avenue northbound; give Route 8 more priority; make Route 8 more frequent. Secondarily, clean up the nort-south leg of Route 8. Route 8 serves the dense Belltown; the MC Harrison Street Route does not. A variant of Route 8 could be truncated at its original terminal on 16th Avenue East.

6. A first hill – SLU – Uptown connection, cool! This is something that shouldn’t have to wait for light rail in 2039. Could be a “quick win” if they actually do it. I would put those busses on the Harrison corridor as opposed to Denny though, unless SDOT gets serious about transit priority on Denny. Denny might have to be “abandoned” to the cars at this point….

   1. Moving the 8 to Harrison feels like a bad idea to me. The problem is, Harrison doesn’t cross I-5 or Seattle Center, so to serve it, a bus would have to weave back and forth between Harrison and Denny. Such weaving back and forth would be slow – much slower than traversing Denny in a bus lane, and during off peak hours, slower than traversing Denny without a bus lane.

      Of course, the fact that Harrison doesn’t go through results in way fewer cars using Harrison, which makes it politically easier to implement transit priority on Harrison, but it doesn’t really serve riders well.

      To achieve reasonable speed, you really need buses to be traveling in a straight line, not jogging back an forth.

      1. “Moving the 8 to Harrison feels like a bad idea to me. The problem is, Harrison doesn’t cross I-5 or Seattle Center, so to serve it, a bus would have to weave back and forth between Harrison and Denny. ”

         Your point is important and correct! The SDOT map is woefully negligent about what happens beyond the ends of the corridor, especially the I-5 end. the SDOT Fact Sheet map proclaiming a square as the Eastlake Layover Facility (ELF) as the appropriate eastern end point is almost criminal negligence from a transit planning perspective.

      2. “The problem is, Harrison doesn’t cross I-5 or Seattle Center”

         Agree it is not ideal. I think they only choose Harrison as transit corridor because light rail station will be on it. The Harrison and Mercer Transit corridor isn’t fixing Route 8. Something else needs to be done to fix Route 8 and hopefully they realize that.

      3. “The problem is, Harrison doesn’t cross I-5 or Seattle Center,…”

         Maybe the City should have not removed the Broad Street right of way and let a developer build on it. It would have been a nice way to jog traffic off of Denny and onto Harrison without 90 degree turns.

         Too late now.

   2. A first Hill/SLU/uptown route would be a great *compliment* to route 8, but surely a poor replacement.

7. Im puzzled that the map appears to show a route 64 and 29. I thonk the 29 is suspended and I don’t think the 64 even exists.

8. As I see it there are three options for this section:

   1) Move the 8. I think this is a bad idea. You sacrifice much of Belltown.
   2) A stand-alone route from SLU to Uptown. This is OK, but not great. It is pretty short and the anchors does the same thing as the 8.
   3) Do what was suggested on the map but flip the tails. This keeps the buses going straight. Both buses would avoid a turn. So a bus goes Mount Baker/Boren/Fairview/Harrison/5th/Mercer/Uptown. The 8 remains the 8 (hopefully with more right-of-way).

   The first option doesn’t cost anything but is bad routing (in my opinion). The second costs a little but doesn’t get you much. The third cost a significant amount but would transform transit in the region. Like the 8 you would want to add right-of-way for the bus. Like the 8 it would be one of the most productive buses even if you didn’t.

9. I’m gonna repeat a point I’ve made before: The massive scale of recent development in SLU deserves a more ambitious circulation plan than monkeying around with pavement striping. The City of Seattle has gotten to milk the area in increased property tax revenue yet continues to promote incremental changes of this street or that — and ignores how they have created a massively denser area that deserves a completely new set of transportation investments at a scale worthy of what they’ve allowed to be built.

   Sadly, I don’t think that Link won’t be nearly enough even if it’s built. The area is too hemmed in by I-5, Seattle Center and Lake Union to build Link and call it a day.

   And it’s time that the city admit that the Mercer Street rebuild was a terrible design. Not only did it not improve traffic flow, but it made that river of cars even wider than it was, punishing pedestrians and bicyclists who have to cross it.

   The situation needs better and bigger picture thinking. I don’t know what should be planned — but I don’t think that mere street repurposing is significant enough to help much.

10. SDOT has a vision map for a frequent transit network within Seattle. It includes a non-specific 10-minute route on Boren and Harrison. It’s hard to say if there’s a more concrete idea for routing but to me it looks like the hope is to run the 8 straight down Denny Way, and a new route down Boren/Harrison.

    Note that Belltown/Denny Triangle/Downtown aren’t included on the map.

    https://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs/programs/transit-program/seattle-transit-measure/the-frequent-transit-network

    I believe the map is taken from the STP, which says: “The FTN map includes anticipated transportation and land use changes through 2031. Transit changes planned for implementation after 2031 will be incorporated into the FTN as part of future updates.”

    https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/SDOT/STP/Transit.pdf

    1. You can see Belltown in the STP transit element. It’s omitted there for brevity https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=6aad13f131e8416da08cbe5e58d33650

       1. The red and orange lines that are not omitted from Downtown/Belltown is a layer that represents Transit Capital Corridor.

          https://services.arcgis.com/ZOyb2t4B0UYuYNYH/arcgis/rest/services/Seattle_Transportation_Plan_Transit_Element/FeatureServer/17

          Transit Capital Corridors are about where SDOT should invest in transit priority while FTN is about where they need to have frequent service.

          My guess is FTN layer doesn’t cover Downtown and Belltown center probably because it not necessary to develop service planning strategy there. No matter how SDOT plans its frequent service, the core area will always meet its coverage goal 100%.

    2. Does Frequent mean until 7pm weekdays, or 10pm every day?

       1. There’s a summary on page T-26 of the doc. It’s until 9 PM every day, including weekends.

          https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/SDOT/STP/Transit.pdf

11. I’m jealous at how much better Community Transit is at timeliness compared to King County Metro. Just looking through all the routes, almost every bus is on time. The worst I’ve seen is a minute early and a minute late.

    Meanwhile for King County Metro, you get buses that are horrendously late no matter what time of day or whether it is a weekend. You can’t blame traffic when there is one bus that is 10 minutes early right behind another bus that is 20 minutes late. It is a lack of accountability from King County Metro. They need to incentivize their drivers to be ON TIME and train them. And please stop changing the driver every few weeks, so we can have people experienced with the route take control.

    Nobody likes standing and waiting for a bus for more than 5 minutes! It’s worse when those numbers push even crazier levels even without traffic.

12. Seems like maybe this could be a decent routing for the Boren Route discussed a couple weeks ago?

13. Yeah the $133 million spent on the Wenatchee for a 25% reduction in fuel has not really worked so great so far. We will see how long it’s out if service. ice.seems?like a ton of money for not a huge reduction but ok.

14. We need a bus from SLU to the Seattle Center area. There is absolutely no East west transit there which makes no sense. Mercer St especially could use, along with Harrison St. Maybe a loop that goes both ways. You have to go back into downtown and take the monorail. Might as well walk.

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