ST Express 2026 restructure

174 Replies to “ST Express 2026 restructure”

1. Wow… this is pretty solid overall. Surprising, in fact. I’m glad ST is giving serious thought to the customer experience rather than focusing solely on efficiency. Commuters from North Snohomish Co, Redmond and South King County get to keep their express routes, which can be faster than having to transfer modes and sit on crowded trains. And though Issaquah is losing their direct service, there’s now a much faster connection between Issaquah and downtown Bellevue. Not bad, ST…

   My only recommendation is the 513 start earlier to serve Boeing before 500a.

   1. I think it’s broadly bad that Issaquah is losing the 554, though if they actually run the 556 at 15 minute headways it’ll more than make up for the difference time-wise. I had a 70 minute wait coming home from the Issaquah Highlands the other day, so I tried the 203/550 instead – somehow only 20 minutes slower despite the obviously slower route and transfer.

      I think the real issue with service to/from Issaquah is the fact that so many people live in the Highlands, but the P&R is basically the only game in town – something that isn’t even that well positioned to serve people. So the old 554 and new 556 are express to the transit center, but then crawl through town to get to the highlands. That’s why the Metro 218 is packed to the gills most days – it’s already a bit slow to get from the Highlands to downtown. Unfortunately, I don’t see a good solution to this – Issaquah is basically set up so an express bus could serve the transit center, or the highlands, and the highlands P&R is too far north to well served by anything other than a local bus that doesn’t exist (up Park Drive).

      Anyways, a lot of words to say that Issaquah isn’t really set up well for transit and I don’t see a good solution

      1. The 554 is going away but Metro will run several express buses (the 215, 218 and 269) from the Highlands to Mercer Island. Since the 556 will also serve the Highlands, folks up there will have lots of options for getting to Link. My guess is they will gravitate towards the Metro buses when going to Seattle and take the 554 when going to Bellevue. In contrast those in lower Issaquah will take the 554 to get just about anywhere. There is also the 203 (which serves the Highlands as well) but it is not very frequent (even during peak) and will take a while to get to South Bellevue Station. That is more useful for people trying to get to the north part of Issaquah. https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/metro/programs-and-projects/east-link-connections

      2. @blumdrew ..You had a 70 minute wait? I am assuming this is for your connecting bus and not the 554…

      3. I didn’t get into the Metro restructure because it’s so complicated and I didn’t think about linking to the article, but there’s a section on Issaquah that explains it. The Metro restructure is final and is being implemented in phases.

         The 203 was implemented in August: a local route from Highlands P&R to northwest Issaquah, Newport Way, and South Bellevue station.

         The 215, 218, and 269 haven’t been restructured yet. They’ll provide 15-minute express service from the Highlands P&R to Mercer Island station, stopping only at I-90 stops (bypassing central Issaquah). Every third 215 will continue east to North Bend (90-minute frequency). The 269 will continue north through Sammamish to Marymoor Village station and Bear Creek P&R every 30 minutes.

         The 556 will go from the Highlands P&R, stopping at city hall, the Sunset Way/Gilman Blvd local stops, Issaquah TC, I-90 stops, South Bellevue station, south Bellevue Way, Bellevue Square (NE 4th), and Bellevue TC.

         I’ve been concerned that this network doesn’t serve all parts of central Issaquah or southeast Issaquah, and thus doesn’t connect the Highlands to them as much as it should to interconnect all of Issaquah to each other, but that’s the network.

         Since you live there, what do you think about the total future network in Issaquah, and getting from one part of Issaquah to another? Will it be satisfactory for people living in the Highlands?

      4. @Ross

         The biggest issue with the Highlands is the lack of service to places other than the P&R, and the location of the P&R (north of the intersection with Park Drive) makes serving the newer parts of the Highlands harder than it needs to be. The 218 will be generally worse than it is now – I certainly don’t want to transfer on a bus that comes half hourly only at peak hours – but the 269 should be a great improvement at least. Honestly, with the 269 serving the same route, I’d rather have the same number of trips on the 218 as today that all serve downtown. What’s the point of the 218 even existing if it doesn’t offer a one seat ride, and comes way less frequently than the 269?

         @Jordan no it was for the 554. It was ~8 and technically I hadn’t missed the previous bus. It might have been 65 minutes, but the 554 has pretty bad night service especially from Issaquah to Seattle.

         @Mike Orr
         I think the 269 is the most exciting of the Metro changes, but the 556 is going to be sort of useless as an express bus for anyone in the Highlands. The 554 already suffers from this, but I think it’ll be exacerbated by more stops and a slower route.

         I’m not living in the Highlands anymore (was a part time thing with a friend until I got a place in Seattle), but I feel like the Highlands are generally not well connected to the rest of Issaquah, in part because there’s only two stops in the Highlands. At least one of the local routes (probably the 203) should be extended up Park to serve everything up that way. Everything only serving the P&R biases the use of transit pretty heavily towards commute only.

      5. The 218 will be generally worse than it is now – I certainly don’t want to transfer on a bus that comes half hourly only at peak hours

         I’m pretty sure the idea is to have a bunch of buses combining for good peak service between the Highlands Park and Ride and Mercer Island. The 218 simply complements the 215 and 269. So it really isn’t worse, you just have a different combination or routes.

         But your point about serving other areas in the Highlands is a good one. Unfortunately Issaquah is a sprawling mess. Rather than build up in the central city they built farther and farther out. When they did add density it was not close to the existing density or the cultural center of the city. Yes, a bus could go out Park Drive to serve the tiny apartment complex next to the “Village Green” but why did they put a complex like that so far away from central Issaquah? It makes it much harder to serve. Yet that is nothing like the sprawling set of subdivisions that define the “city”. If you build a place that is clearly designed for the automobile you really can’t expect the county to bend over backwards to provide decent transit for it.

         As much as I detest the whole notion of an area dependent on a park and ride I get why it is. The assumption when they built the area was that people would drive to most places — it isn’t too surprising that Metro feels the same way.

      6. “The 218 will be generally worse than it is now”

         The intention is that you can take any of the 215, 218, or 269 — the first one that comes along — because they all serve the same stops between the Highlands P&R and Mercer Island. The only reason the 218 will exist is for capacity relief peak hours.

         Some people think all 218’s should be renumbered to 215, because 218 will be identical to the short 215 runs.

      7. “556 is going to be sort of useless as an express bus for anyone in the Highlands.”

         But it will be the only way to get to central Issaquah locations, and it will serve more of them (the Gilman Village area and planned regional center). The slower nature of the 554 and even slower future 556 is the reason for the three Metro super-expresses.

      8. “At least one of the local routes (probably the 203) should be extended up Park to serve everything up that way.”

         That’s what I don’t know, how much of the Highlands residential area is within walking distance of the P&R. It was built as a New Urbanist neighborhood, and part of that is the principle that everything is within walking distance of the transit hub and retail shops. I’ve only been to the Highlands a couple times, once to go on one of asdf2’s transit hikes in the woods, and once to evaluate the Highland’s urbanist/walkable bona fides. From what I saw, all the housing was within a 10-20 minute walk of the P&R. It may have sprawled out since then.

      9. blumdrew: yes, Route 269 may be the only unambiguously good ELC route.

      10. “Route 269 may be the only unambiguously good ELC route.”

          The 226 extension to South Bellevue station has been a godsend for me.

2. It’s great Pierce County is getting direct bus service, but Link is not efficient for those traveling to Kent/Renton/Auburn either.

   We need better bus service to major transit centers here. The 101/150 are great but not the fastest. And those traveling from places like the U District have to deal with an even longer trip.

   First, we have to admit the whole MLK way Link segment was a mistake. Elevate the whole segment between Rainier Beach and Mount Baker and scrap the intermediate stations. It could be replaced with an automated streetcar serving the endpoints, as well as the 106 continuing along that corner (which is far more used than the light rail anyways). Save 5-10 mins on the ride.

   Next, add better service to Rainier Beach station from South King County. The 106/107 are not fast enough for the very short distance to Renton. The 101/102 can be truncated to Rainier Beach instead and made all day service, with very limited trips going directly to Seattle. 102 and 148 can be deleted as the 101 can be extended to serve Fairwood. 153/160 (soon Rapid Ride I) and maybe 105 too should also extend and terminate at Rainier Beach creating a very frequent shuttle from Rainier Beach to Renton, allowing for more reliable transfers to routes like 566 for those headed further south to Kent and Auburn stations. DART service should adjust accordingly to minimize transfer times and reduce replication of service. The Sounder is obviously a better choice for Kent/Auburn during peak, but this allows for people to have access to bus service all day between these areas, rather than limited Sounder hours. And the Sounder which is not worth for Renton can be eliminated as a consideration in routes like the 906, with a preference for connecting to the airport as well as Rainier Beach Link.

   The service hours saved by deleting 101/102/148 will mostly certainly be enough to add this service, and it would do a far greater service to everyone living in the Southeast King area and get more people on Link from this region.

   1. “Elevate the whole segment between Rainier Beach and Mount Baker and scrap the intermediate stations. ” You mean get rid of everything that is good about light rail? Low(er) capital costs, at-grade station access, and stop spacing is what makes Link great in SE Seattle, will make Link great in the Bel-Red corridor, and should be repeated elsewhere in the region.

      The great error of ST3 is wishing Link is something that it is not. Pierce should have punted on Link and invested in better Sounder (more trips plus electrification for faster trips) and better STX (more bus hours, better HOV infrastructure in Tacoma & Seattle) instead. The fact that the STX routes are being retained suggested that staff and politicians are realizing that FW Link, while an excellent upgrade to the RR-A corridor, is not a useful mode for connecting Tacoma and Seattle directly. TDLE is fine, it’s still useful for trips within & between Pierce and South King (which includes SeaTac, which is what many Tacoma leaders care about), but it doesn’t well serve Tacoma-Seattle trip pairs and this proposed restructure reflects that fact.

      1. South Link’s sweet spot will probably be used for trips between Federal Way and Tacoma at one end and SeaTac, southeast Seattle, and transfers to Kent on the other end. Whether this is worth the cost of the extensions and the opportunity cost of not investing in something else instead, is more debatable.

         When the Spine was conceived in the 1990s all the way up to 2015, the rhetoric was all about connecting Tacoma and Federal Way to downtown Seattle more frequently, reliably, and capaciously. When it became clear that Westlake-Federal Way would take 55 minutes and Westlake-Tacoma Dome 75 minutes, the Pierce County rhetoric shifted to the need to access SeaTac airport and to attract south King County workers/shoppers to Tacoma. They said a one-seat ride to downtown Seattle was a secondary benefit, not the primary purpose of the extension, so the long travel time to downtown Seattle wasn’t a big issue. The primary purpose was to attract employers and retail spenders to Tacoma to improve its economy and tax base. So the the reason for far south Link has shifted over the years and is still ambiguous. And those reasons affect how much it’s worth the cost. (Would they build a Tacoma Dome-SeaTac line that didn’t continue to downtown Seattle?)

      2. Given the rhetoric from Tacoma and Pierce politicians, the Puyallup tribe, and others, yes I think rail would be being build between Tacoma and SeaTac. Also, the value of a single network is operating scale – while few people will ride end to end, the train obviously runs end to end. The Tacoma to SeaTac segment operates out of the same OMF footprint as the rest of Link, while T-Link needs its own bespoke OMF (lack of scale is what makes the Seattle Streetcars so expensive to operate).

         “frequently, reliably, and capaciously.” I like that phrasing. Underscore how there is a lot of value in Link service that does not include speed.

      3. What rhetoric is that? I get the feeling most don’t care or have a clue about transit. They just see a big expensive party, and want to be on the guest list.

      4. “What rhetoric is that? I get the feeling most don’t care or have a clue about transit”

         Tacoma and Pierce politicians have been saying since the mid 2010s that they need Link to the airport to attract employers to Tacoma, and Link might encourage workers and shoppers from South King County to go to Tacoma. Both of those are to bolster Tacoma’s economy and jobs and tax base.

         Some people now think Tacoma is a decaying has-been city that’s losing jobs and heading toward being a future slum, while the high-paying jobs and high-end shopping and desirable places to live are concentrating in the central Eastside and Seattle. Tacoma and Pierce County want to counter that possibility and impression, and see Link to the airport (and secondarily to Seattle and the rest of the region) as a significant step in accomplishing that.

         It’s the same for the other outer suburbs: Lynnwood, Everett, and Issaquah. That’s why they’ve been so insistent on Link. They see it as a way to make their jobs and tax base thrive, and attract people to live there. They don’t want to fall behind while other cities have Link and they don’t, because then all these other bad things might happen.

         All this shows politicians don’t understand transit or riders’ needs very well, but we already knew that.

   2. Elevate the whole segment between Rainier Beach and Mount Baker and scrap the intermediate stations.

      First of all, it would probably be a lot cheaper to build a trench for Rainer Valley, rather than elevating it (according to the report — https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24785840/wsp-mlk-separation-concept-estimates-st_task_order_7001_final_memo.pdf). Secondly, if they build a separate line through Rainier Valley they would probably want *more* stations, not fewer. Why on earth would you want fewer stations in Rainier Valley?

      Next, add better service to Rainier Beach station from South King County. The 101/102 can be truncated to Rainier Beach instead and made all day service.

      I can see the advantage of that. It would be a great way to get to Rainier Valley or Beacon Hill from Renton. You would also save service hours. But even if the train was faster it still isn’t high speed rail. The express to SoDo would still be faster. Of course you could truncate in SoDo but people want their one-seat ride (which is an issue).

      In my opinion the better approach is the one they should be using in Federal Way. Have the bus stop by the freeway at an interchange station and then keep going. For Renton the obvious interchange station would be Boeing Access Road. It is really the only reasonable argument for the station — it should be a connection between the freeway buses and Link. At that point riders would have the best of both worlds — an express to downtown and a connection to Link. The only thing left would be to speed up that connection to downtown. They could work with WSDOT in building the HOV connection from I-5 to the SoDo Busway and that would basically do it.

      1. @Ross

         Well if Rainier Valley stops were replaced with parallel bus service… Which already exists, Link would be significantly faster than a bus during peak. And Link is more worth operating than a bus route which can become significantly late or get stuck in traffic.

         Rail should be the gold standard. It can be automated in the future very easily, while buses cannot. It’s also more frequent and reliable to make transfers. Maybe not light rail outside of Seattle, but fast metro rail. And light rail is still decently fast anyways if it’s given the opportunity to hit it’s top speed of 55 mph more often… I’d gladly keep the downtown buses going if we can afford it. But we need better Link connections and service for all day reliability.

      2. Well they also need an HOV improvement on SR 900, as well. For the 101.

         But really every time I take Link very few people board in the Rainier Beach to Mount Baker stops. It’s a waste of time for everybody. We can save 10+ mins to the airport versus add a few minutes by bus and serve far more stops with the bus (106).

         I’m confused on why we are so backwards. In other places, buses do short distance routes with many stops, high frequency and reliability. Trains are fast and travel far. Obviously light rail is not but why don’t we have faster trains? Why make buses do these long trips?? Instead we have high frequency trains with low frequency long distance bus service.

      3. And yeah the Sounder exists but again limited service, and it’s not competitive to driving. Faster than Link but still not ideal service especially for Renton. The 101 can beat it out which is embarrassing. The Link is also more useful for most riders while the Sounder only stops at King Street.

      4. By the time I transfer from Link and board the Sounder and get down to Tukwila, I might as well already have reached Rainier Beach via Link, or Renton via the 101…

      5. And your solution doesn’t solve the problem for those who want to keep heading north to the U District or Shoreline. They have to take Link inevitably, but at the same time no one wants to slug through I-5 traffic or the Rainier Valley segment.

         I’d much prefer the bus to get HOV infrastructure and go to SODO as fast as possible than take Link. But we know that’s a long shot. And this comes with much more limited service as Metro will cry “service hours” if the buses head into Seattle. This is why I suggested truncating the routes , because myself and most riders care a lot more about not waiting 15 mins to transfer and having more frequency/all day options, than having a one seat ride. The quicker transfers and expanded service will make the slightly longer trip on Link worth it.

      6. “why don’t we have faster trains?”

         Because in the 1990s ST had a different vision of the Link network. It would be mostly surface to keep capital costs down to MAX/VTA/San Diego levels, which was considered the maximum taxpayers were willing to pay. It would be surface from CID to Tacoma via the northeast edge of Beacon Hill. Underground CID-UDistrict was a given, due to the existing tunnel, hills, and Ship Canal. But everywhere feasibly flat would be surface.

         Light rail was chosen because it’s street-compatible (it can do all of surface, elevated, and underground). The 55 mph limit seemed plenty when much of the surface segments would be on 35 mph arterials, and maybe because of memories of when the freeway speed limit was 55.

         Nobody in that era seems to have calculated how long it would take to get to Tacoma on 35 mph arterials.

         Link trains can go 65 mph and light rail can go 85 mph. But it requires track with gentler curves and inclines. The Link spec was 55 mph, so that’s what the track and train quality were designed for.

         So ST had contradictory goals of a long-distance Spine, mostly surface to save capital costs, and an inadequate understanding of the speed and number of stations a dense city like Seattle would need. All that combined led to a hybrid intermediate mode that does all of these mediocrely but none of them excellently.

         (Although riders between Westlake and Roosevelt say that segment at least is excellent, and three times faster than previous bus service.)

      7. Well if Rainier Valley stops were replaced with parallel bus service… Which already exists, Link would be significantly faster than a bus during peak.

         Not for riders in Rainier Valley. How are they supposed to ride the train if you get rid of the stations? That reminds me of the old line: It would be really fast if they got rid of all the stops.

         I’m confused on why we are so backwards. In other places, buses do short distance routes with many stops, high frequency and reliability. Trains are fast and travel far.

         Yes, you are clearly confused. Look at the world’s metros on a map. New York City Subway, London Underground, Paris Metro. Look at smaller cities — cities the size of Seattle. These are massive cities — much bigger than Seattle. Consider a city that is closer to Seattle. How about the Oslo Metro. It is considered the world’s most extensive metro per resident. All these systems have one thing in common: They don’t go that far from the center of town. That is because metros work best in a dense, urban environment. For most cities, it just isn’t worth the money to build a metro to the distant suburbs or distant cities. They either run commuter/regional rail or express bus service.

         This begs the question — what is the different between commuter/regional rail and a metro? In general, frequency, stop spacing and cost. Commuter/regional rail tends to run less frequently. They get away with this lack of frequency because the trips tend to be long. A high percentage of the trips are to the main, central core. In other words not that many people are trying to get from say, Lynnwood to Mountlake Terrace. They are trying to get to Seattle. For the same reason, they tend to have bigger stop spacing. They aren’t really serving neighborhoods (like a metro) they are serving towns or cities. So a train running from say, Baltimore to DC doesn’t have to serve all of Baltimore — it is assumed that riders will somehow find their way to the main train station. In contrast the whole point of a metro is to serve as much of the urban core as possible. Finally there is cost. Commuter/regional rail tends to be built upon old railways. This keeps the cost low.

         And it is a good thing, since regional/commuter never gets the kind of ridership that a typical metro does. This is the part that a lot of people don’t get. The average speed is faster. The distance is longer. Yet more people ride within the city. It really doesn’t matter why, this is just true all over the world. I can explain why (but this comment is already pretty long). The point is, most transit trips (regardless of quality) are short.

         There are exceptions to these rules of thumb. L. A. is a huge, sprawling city with a weak center. It probably should build the largest metro in the world (extending out very far). New York is so massive (and sprawling) that the handful of express trains they run are worth it. But most cities are like Seattle — almost all the density is within a few miles of downtown. This is where you will get the most ridership no matter what you build. San Fransisco is a great example of this. Even when San Fransisco’s buses were the slowest in the developed world and BART was a high-speed cutting-edge system providing outstanding service for daily commuters, more people rode the slow-as-hell buses than BART.

         Which again brings me back to Rainier Valley. You are right — they made a big mistake with Rainier Valley. The biggest mistake was not building the stations where the people are (it should have run down Rainier, not MLK). But more and more people have moved close to the station. It also should have been grade separated. If they had done that it would be a much better system (whether it made it out to the suburbs or not). It could mean more frequent service along with automation. But you sure as hell don’t want to skip stations. Our system doesn’t have enough stations as it is (which is why it underperforms).

      8. And your solution doesn’t solve the problem for those who want to keep heading north to the U District or Shoreline. They have to take Link inevitably, but at the same time no one wants to slug through I-5 traffic or the Rainier Valley segment.

         You are confused about my solution as well. Here it is: Again, bury the trains in Rainier Valley. Keep all the stations (of course). Use BAR as a connector station. Speed up the 101 from I-5 to SoDo by adding a ramp from the HOV lanes to the SoDo Busway. Change HOV-2 to HOV-3.

         So who the hell is slogging through I-5 traffic? The bus from Renton is in an HOV-3 lane until it reaches the ramps to SoDo. Then the bus is in a busway until they get to SoDo station where they transfer. Or they just transfer at BAR. Sure, they have to ride through Rainier Valley but so what? It would be grade separated. The slow part is actually riding Link through downtown. So I suppose you want to get rid of most of those stations as well, right? Are you thinking no stations between CID and Westlake? Oh, and what about SoDo and Stadium. Why are we keeping them since they also involve surface running and have no more riders than those in Rainier Valley?

         You are going the wrong direction. It is like you are designing a Hummer for the civilian market and you are saying “Bigger Tires! Rougher Ride! More Expensive!”

         You have it completely backwards. The biggest flaw with Link — by far — is the lack of stations. There should be way more stations, not less. If there were then there would be a lot more riders.

      9. Why make buses do these long trips??

         Because they are good at it. Imagine I want to go from Tacoma to Seattle. Do I want to stop a dozen times along the way? No. Are there lots of people taking trips along the way (e. g. Fife to Star Lake)? Not really. Is the bus fast? Absolutely.

         An express works really well because the travel pattern fits it and we have built freeways between the cities. Again, this is common throughout the world. Either they have an existing rail system they can leverage or they run express buses into the city. Again, look at Oslo. Remember, they have “the most extensive metro per capita in the world”. Now consider a fairly high density suburb only about seven miles away. So how do they get into Oslo from there? Bus! Yep, a half hour bus ride into town. Much of it is on an expressway. They do the same thing we are doing — taking advantage of car-based infrastructure for longer distance express travel.

      10. A 30 min bus ride for 7 miles? Now I realize why transit riders have low expectations.

      11. A 30 min bus ride for 7 miles? Now I realize why transit riders have low expectations.

          Seriously? Oslo has an outstanding transit system. Look at the modal share: 31% transit, 32% walking, 6% biking. Holy cow, the modal share for driving (29%) is lower than it is in Paris (32%) or New York City (30%). I would say their expectations are very high and often met.

      12. The 542/545 are probably the best routes I’ve seen in terms of speed and efficiency. Much more miles in very short time. And useful transfers. If only cities other than Redmond has the luxury of fast bus infrastructure.

          The 101 quite literally loses out to me compared to driving to Tukwila Link and park&ride. The 102 is even slower. Not the best bus service. The only reason I take it is because parking is impossible these days in Tukwila after a certain time in the morning.

      13. @south king resident

          for me the 101 largest problem (and other i5 freeway ones) is the lack of better hov/transit lanes on i5.

          they should toll the center freeway lanes and it’d help out a lot more and maybe build the airport way exit/entrance

      14. The 102 is actually alright from S Renton Park & Ride but the last trip is at 7:40am and many times I’ll need to travel after that. It also ends too early in the evenings. The 101 spends too much time going to RTC and ends up late. The 148 is practically unreliable at this point that I don’t even bother, and winds up in random deviations through smaller neighborhoods. And whoever wrote up the schedules designed it so you have to wait the absolute longest possible for each useful transfer to the 148.

          And Kent Hill north of the 162 has zero service after peak hour routes were suspended. 162 is the next one you get, which I think is a solid route and of course is getting deleted for Link? Make it make sense.

      15. @WL the 101 also suffers from being too slow in Renton. Not enough bus only infrastructure. The transfers to the 101 are useless too, mimicking the 101s path when it should bypass via Rainier Ave and match the timings to minimize wait time.

          While the 101 serves a lot of people in downtown, many potential riders don’t live along the route and have to make a very bad transfer.

      16. But from what I’ve seen, commenters on these blogs will argue a few things:

          1. Short high frequency bus routes are great because it’s in the city
          2. Long distance bus routes are great because it connects cities

          But long distance bus routes are bad for suburbs because they’re too long and consume service hours and are expensive. And short distance bus routes in suburbs are bad because people will “lose their one seat ride”

          So suburbs don’t need reliable bus service despite paying taxes for it, apparently?

      17. 1. Short high frequency bus routes are good EVERYWHERE because that’s a transit best practice that makes the network the most effective. Renton is populous enough for buses running at least every 15 minutes full time. So are Auburn and Kent. It’s only when you get out to Black Diamond that it might be to the point to switch to a rural half-hourly level.

          2. Long-distance fast regional bus routes have their place. They’re like regional rail on rubber tires. That’s why we’re building Stride 1 and 2: the 405 corridor needs something robust. Renton also needs something similarly robust to Seattle, something faster than the 101. But you can’t just put long-distance buses everywhere, especially overlapping other long-distance buses and modes excessively. You have to look at where the most strategic places for them are, how many stops they should have, and whether it’s reasonable to have; e.g., a route from Tacoma to Bellevue overlapping all the other express infrastructure.

          In this scenario, it wouldn’t matter as much if you had to transfer at Renton TC, because all the routes would be frequent so you wouldn’t be waiting long. But there really should be routes across the entire city of Renton, tying the city together. Metro Connects has a prototype of it, a 105/106 route from the Renton Highlands to downtown Renton and west to Rainier Beach. It would replace both those routes, and the part north of Rainier Beach would be attached to another route. Because Renton TC is at the center of a small city, while Rainier Beach station is near the edge of a large city.

          There are two reasons all this hasn’t happened yet. One is a general lack of political will in cities and counties. The other is the significant cost, which would have to be paid by taxes somehow.

      18. @South king resident

          > But long distance bus routes are bad for suburbs because they’re too long and consume service hours and are expensive. And short distance bus routes in suburbs are bad because people will “lose their one seat ride” So suburbs don’t need reliable bus service despite paying taxes for it, apparently?

          I don’t quite agree with some of the others here. truncating the 101 or the 106 doesn’t make sense to me as Al suggested. The 101 offers good travel time to renton, truncating it just adds 25 or 40% more time to reach seattle.

          regarding speeding up the bus, that’s more up to the cities themselves if they want to add bus lanes. renton could easily add bus lanes to allow it to skip traffic.

      19. southkingcounty resident: Route 102 is redundant to Sounder; if Route 148 was shifted to Tukwila station, the tail riders would have direct access to it. yes, routes 542 and 545 are good; they would be much better if consolidated into one with shorter waits. Between Tukwila and King Street Station, Sounder is less than 20 minutes.

   3. As for the 150, this can start from Rainier Beach as well, heading down to Tukwila P&R and the remainder of its usual route. I think ultimately however all downtown bus service should be replaced with Link. It’s just a matter of speeding up Link that should be the focus. The only slow part in my opinion is the part between SeaTac and SODO, which could use bypass routes.

      1. Truncating the 101 and 150 at Rainer Beach gets into the same travel-time tradeoff that ST Express faced. It would add 12 minutes to travel time by my estimate, and there’s also the transfer overhead if everything runs every 10-15 minutes.

         Metro has looked at truncating the 101 and has always always rejected it. During the 2014 recession cuts we asked Metro to truncate the 101 at Rainier Beach to enable it to reach 15-minute frequency. Metro replied that it would only truncate it if it couldn’t afford to maintain 30-minute frequency. Metro Connects 2050 still has the 101, one of the few expresses still going to downtown, so Metro intends to keep it forever.

         Metro has also rejected truncating the 150 near term, but the two scenarios for RapidRide 150 have it either truncated at Rainier Beach or moving to 4th Ave S when/if Link displaces the SODO busway. It’s in the first tier of RapidRide expansions after the I/J/K/R, estimated to open by 2039, but still unfunded.

         We have been advocating extending RapidRide I to Rainier Beach station rather than having no direct transfer to Link. So far Metro has refused to, and it starts construction next year.

      2. “Truncating the 101 and 150 at Rainer Beach gets into the same travel-time tradeoff that ST Express faced. It would add 12 minutes to travel time by my estimate, and there’s also the transfer overhead if everything runs every 10-15 minutes.”

         That tradeoff substantially weakens if ST takes away the SODO busway for West Seattle Link construction.

         However I’d also point out that there are destinations along Routes 101 and 150 of interest to SE Seattle residents (SouthCenter; Renton Fred Meyer; Renton Landing retail) which number 84K-102K depending on the definition . Getting to those often requires opposite direction travel or using slow local routes while often traveling out of direction. SE Seattle residents deserve better transit access besides just Link’s 1 Line.

      3. The only slow part in my opinion is the part between SeaTac and SODO, which could use bypass routes.

         Yet it is an express! There are literally miles and miles between stations. I think that is what confuses people. They get to Tukwila, have a very long stretch until Rainier Valley and think “Why it suddenly going so slow?”

         Because it is a subway! It is finally traveling at normal speeds. So why then does it take so long to get from Tukwila to Seattle? Because it is long way away! Seriously, break out the ruler. It is over ten miles from TIBS to Downtown Seattle. Ten miles! That is a really long way for a metro line. Just compare it the greatest metro system in North America — the New City Subway. Start in Manhattan. Now go out ten miles. If you go east you are way out in Queens. How long does it take to get from say, Briarwood Queens to the Flatiron? Over a half hour! That is the nature of a metro.

         You are basically hoping that the metro magically transforms itself into a commuter rail (or maybe a high-speed rail network) for the benefit of relatively few riders. That is just a terrible value.

         Oh, and you know what New York City has? Express buses. By far the greatest rail system in North America and yet they run express buses from all over the place. Inside the city, outside the city, you name it. By all means we should leverage Link where appropriate. But we shouldn’t assume that express buses have no place in the region.

   4. Link is not efficient for those traveling to Kent/Renton/Auburn either.

      We need better bus service to major transit centers here. The 101/150 are great but not the fastest.

      The 101 is pretty darn fast. I suppose you could get on the freeway earlier but then you would lose a lot of riders. A cab from the middle of Renton is about 8 minutes faster (not a lot). It is still clearly an express. The 150 is different. The 101 takes about a half hour from Renton while the 150 takes about an hour from Kent. The 150 spends most of its time getting to and through Tukwila. It is really only an express from Tukwila, not Kent. Kent could use an express to Seattle.

      Auburn has an express but it stops at Federal Way along the way. Even so, it is faster to get from Auburn to Downtown Seattle than from Kent to downtown. Auburn to Kent is not bad (via the 160) but it still isn’t an express.

      In my opinion this is the biggest express service hole in the south end. There should be an Auburn/Kent/Downtown Seattle express bus. How this fits in with the other buses is a challenge. There is value in running express to Federal Way from Auburn (and in turn, Sumner and Puyallup). But I think that bus should just end there. Riders heading to Seattle would take the other bus. From Kent it should run every fifteen minutes — hard to say what makes sense further south. So I’m thinking something like this:

      Puyallup/Sumner/Auburn/Federal Way — Every half hour
      Puyallup/Sumner/Auburn/Kent/Seattle — Every half hour
      Kent/Seattle — Every half hour

      Thus riders from Kent would have a bus every fifteen minutes to and from Seattle.

   5. I think that a big missing puzzle piece is a new bus transit center built well enough and safe enough at Rainier Beach for waiting and layovers. There are several adjacent properties near the station that could work well.

      With such a facility, many route changes become possible. Not only could a Route 101 or 150 termination work well, but RapidRide R buses could terminate and lay over there. Or maybe 106 or 107 could be split there. Or maybe ST’s proposed owl service could deviate there before reversing back to I-5.

      Unfortunately there’s no expressed interest in this, even among most transit advocates. The transit riders in this area are usually poor with little clout and often foreign-born and unfamiliar with the local transit planning process. The advocates outside of the area don’t see any “Urbanist” destinations there like brewpubs or trendy restaurants or arenas or white collar jobs or medical buildings (seemingly the exact opposite destination of a Ballard or Alaska Junction).

      It also suffers from an edge problem. It’s in ST’s North King area but there are so many North King needs that it seems irrelevant. It could help Renton (ST’s East King) or Tukwila (South King) but they balk at doing anything outside of their boundaries. Frankly, it would do more for riders than the BAR station construction would at a much lower cost, but the location just outside of South King prevents it.

      I hope against hope that the topic arises in the RapidRide R planning — but frankly it probably needs to have legs on its own. There’s just no attempt to even merely study what a transit center could be or what it would need in terms of size, location and cost.

      1. I should add that it would be a great RapidRide I terminus too.

      2. I think a large transfer center at BAR would be ideal, with HOV stops and a Sounder station. The existing 101, 150, and 59X would all stop there; potentially the A, R, 107, 124 as well. The 59X could probably terminate there.

         Unfortunately the infrastructure cost there would be far higher than what is budgeted for BAR station.

      3. “The advocates outside of the area don’t see any “Urbanist” destinations there like brewpubs or trendy restaurants or arenas or white collar jobs or medical buildings”

         This is completely inaccurate, and borders on an ad hominem attack. STB authors have repeatedly argued to truncate the 101 and 150 to Rainier Beach, to extend RapidRide I to Rainier Beach, and maybe for light rail between Rainier Valley and Renton.

         Urbanist advocates consider not only hipsters who need gourmet coffee and brews, but average people traveling between larger neighborhoods/cities, and giving lower-income people who can least afford cars better transit options. Because those same urbanist advocates might live or work in Renton someday even if it doesn’t have indie brewpubs, or have an elderly/disabled relative living in a group home there, or want to visit friends there.

         I’ve visited several friends in Renton over the years. I know people who work at Renton Boeing or the video-game company there. My friend’s brother with Downs syndrome lived in a group home in Renton, inaccessible by transit, which made it really hard for her to visit him. I looked for a Medicaid home for my elderly relative, and 99% of them are deep in single-family areas like parts of Renton, so every little bit of frequent/fast transit to at least somewhere in Renton would help immensely.

      4. “This is completely inaccurate, and borders on an ad hominem attack. STB authors have repeatedly argued to truncate the 101 and 150 to Rainier Beach, to extend RapidRide I to Rainier Beach, and maybe for light rail between Rainier Valley and Renton.”

         I think it’s rather obvious that the biggest problem about express buses stopping at Rainier Beach is a lack of a decent transit center with reversal capabilities there. It makes it very difficult to pull of I-5, stop at that Link station and return to I-5.

         This is exactly what many ST Express bus services do and what they will continue to do in this proposal. Why? Because in many places it’s reasonable to pull off the freeway, go through a few signals to get to the transit center and get back to the freeway.

         For example, take the northbound KDM stops on the proposed owl south service. An ST bus has to wind around through several big intersections for almost a mile to get to the transit center. Then it must reverse course to get back to the freeway.

         If Rainier Beach had a transit center just south of Henderson, it could be designed so that would be just as fast if not faster for a bus to pull off I-5, go through only one major signal at BAR, stop there and then return to I-5 to continue onward.

         As long as Rainier Beach does not have a good transit center, it’s going to be avoided by I-5 express bus proposals. It’s why I keep mentioning it. No agency will want to consider stopping there because of the hassle of getting to and from I-5 while stopping there.

         And declaring my comment as an ad hominem attack is deflecting the point. All the advocating for any route changes to Rainier Beach seem little more than idle wishes unless there is that adjacent bus transit center with easy reversal capabilities. With a usable travsit center, transit connectivity from SE Seattle could be so much better in so many ways.

      5. > With such a facility, many route changes become possible. Not only could a Route 101 or 150 termination work well, but RapidRide R buses could terminate and lay over there. Or maybe 106 or 107 could be split there. Or maybe ST’s proposed owl service could deviate there before reversing back to I-5.

         We’ve been over this already. Both Renton and Tukwila want a direct bus to Seattle.

         For Southcenter, if one wants to use Link instead there is already the RapidRide F and then one can transfer at Tukwila international boulevard station.

         For Renton one can currently get to Seattle in 30 minutes (assuming low traffic) if it was truncated at Rainier Beach it’d take around 50 minutes including the transfer. Also if one wants to use link can take the route 106 and transfer there.

         > I hope against hope that the topic arises in the RapidRide R planning — but frankly it probably needs to have legs on its own. There’s just no attempt to even merely study what a transit center could be or what it would need in terms of size, location and cost.

         RapidRide R is already planning on heading to Rainier Beach. I’m not sure why you are saying there is no attempt when the current plan for the rapidride R is already to head to the light rail station..

         > Unfortunately there’s no expressed interest in this

         You haven’t really explained a single benefit from what is the benefit of truncating all the routes there. The only thing I see is increased travel times, especially during off peak periods.

         I guess you could argue for increased frequency with the combined route 106 and “eliminated” route 101. But they already run every 15 minutes, is the idea to run it every 7 minutes instead?

         Having route 150 and route 101/106 all end there doesn’t really help as a transfer point either. its a bit too far north. aka going from kent to renton it seems a bit odd to transfer there.

      6. > And declaring my comment as an ad hominem attack is deflecting the point.

         No, it is calling you out on resorting to it. You should not be complacent on using ad hominem’s. You can make your point without using it.

      7. > And declaring my comment as an ad hominem attack is deflecting the point.

         You said “most transit advocates” dismiss Renton as not worth attention because it doesn’t have trendy destinations. That sounds like a false accusation against me and most transit fans I know., who do not fit this description. False or overgeneralized accusations against a person or group are ad hominem and a violation of the blog’s comment policy. I read ‘”Urbanist” destinations” as implying urbanist people, but on rereading it, I may have been wrong about that.

         Renton may have little political clout, but political clout and what transit advocates/urbanists care about are two different things that often don’t overlap.

         Speaking as an urbanist transit advocate, I want everywhere to have a walkable, transit-rich, convenient, human-friendly environment to live in. It’s especially critical in larger cities that affect more people, and in lower-income areas where the cost of a car-dependent environment is especially burdensome. Rich people who choose to live in an isolated waterfront house have a choice. Working-class people who can’t afford to live in a convenient area like Ballard or Capitol Hill or downtown Bellevue don’t have a choice, and it’s cruel to make the bottom 80% of neighborhoods inconvenient and pedestrian-hostile and force people who don’t have a choice to live in them if they don’t want to. At minimum, it limits their access to jobs because they can’t get to most of them without a car.

         So transit advocates/urbanists want Renton’s government to make Renton more walkable without displacing Renton’s lower-income residents, and to prioritize transit and invest in it more. We get frustrated when Renton keeps not doing that year after year, or only makes token gestures like The Landing which are too little to be a complete solution for anybody, or wants to push the transit center to the freeway/stroad periphery with little pedestrian opportunities, and does nothing for the eastern half of the city. Regardless of whether Renton improves things or not, we want to get good transit there, as best as feasible, for everybody’s short- and long-distance trips. There are technical disagreements and tradeoffs about what transit routes/modes/levels to where would be best. And I note that both Renton and Pugetopolis are far behind the international standard of 15-minute frequency full-time on all routes, not just two or three RapidRide and Stride lines. That’s something the city of Renton should work on, and should encourage the county to work on.

      8. Rainier Beach station was a terminus for the 107, and will be for RapidRide R, and might be for RapidRide 150 if that alternative is chosen. Whether it needs more of a transit-center infrastructure to do that, I don’t know; I leave it to Metro who are the experts. The RapidRide R project is about a route, not a transit center; there’s no budget for a transit center. The project will have to include whatever the R needs to layover there, but I don’t know what that is, so I’ll wait until Metro tells us. I see a lot of industrial lots just south of it on MLK, and one of those companies might be open to an arrangement to park a couple Metro buses in their surface lot for supplemental income.

      9. I think you guys are missing the more important point about the missing connectivity. The comment is about Renton retail destinations and not Renton residents. It’s about SE Seattle residents instead. Renton retail is to SE Seattle what North Aurora retail is to NW Seattle. Yet it’s very difficult or time consuming to get there from SE Seattle on transit.

         For example, Renton has the big three discount retailers — Target, Walmart and Fred Meyer. SE Seattle does not have these stores yet has 84-102K in population (almost as populous as Renton). By car, these stores can be reached within 15 minutes.

      10. @ Al

          I don’t see how the transit times get better.

          If one is on Rainier to reach say Walmart currently one just takes the route 106 straight there. Your plan is to split the 106/107 at Rainier beach so now one would need to either take the link and then transfer or take the bus and transfer to another bus.

          Can you show a specific trip example of how it improves transit times.

      11. Very few people shop at big box retailers by traveling with transit… Where do you put the stuff? Smaller stores fit that mold better

          And anyways my proposal actually helps those people the most. They get more service into Renton, while the current buses skip over on the freeway into Seattle.

          Commuter rail is fine but it doesn’t have the utility of light rail and metro. Our light rail can go reasonably fast, skip traffic, and arrive frequently. Obviously that needs riders but Rainier Beach isn’t some high density area that will supply most of these riders. Those riders come from downtown.

          I don’t get why the Link extension to Lynnwood gets to be so fast but South King riders have to slug through for 40 mins from the airport for the same distance?? The 2 Line is considerably faster too. We can keep all the Rainier Beach stops but the 35 mph isn’t cutting it especially considering those stops are pretty well spaced too.

          Also it turns out that the 101/150 is a one seat ride into Seattle, but also forces people who don’t happen to live along those buses a 3-4 ride route to Seattle. In an ideal world the 101/150 would stay on the highway, but I’m just suggesting truncating them as a tradeoff to get *more* people 2 ride service and all day expanded service instead of an imbalance to only those who live on the 101/150.

      12. And I’ve done testing on this.

          The 101/150 beats Link significantly almost every time outside of peak hours. It does turn out Link is faster if you avoid I-5 from 7-11am, but only barely.

          But for the Lynnwood extension, it’s much faster during traffic. And still comparable with less traffic.

      13. I didn’t see a topic on southeast Seattle residents shopping in Renton but maybe I missed it. If that’s why an MLK route between Rainier Beach and the Renton Fred Meyer is needed, that needs to be articulated. That’s a different transit market from Renton residents wanting to get to downtown Seattle and other areas fast, and may require a second bus route on Renton MLK to fully serve both ridership constituencies. That would allow the 101 to skip most of the stops on MLK though, which would speed it up.

          “Very few people shop at big box retailers by traveling with transit… Where do you put the stuff?”

          “Big box” refers to the size of the building, not the size of the merchandise. Fred Meyer, Walmart, Target, Best Buy, GI Joe’s, etc, have tens of thousands of items small and light enough to carry on a bus. People go there for a bagful of goods, or just one or two items. Hundreds of them on transit every day. They may not be noticeable at bus stops if they don’t have full shopping bags.

          When I was growing up in the suburbs my parents did most of their shopping at big box chain stores and shopping malls. When I moved to the U-District and Seattle didn’t have most of those retailers (and U Village was smaller then), I wondered how people met their shopping needs. But after a year I realized smaller and independent stores met most of those needs, and I only had to go to Northgate one or twice a year for clothes or towels or such, and I hardly ever had to go to Southcenter or the big-box city south of it.

          Also, many people don’t go to Walmart in particular because of how it treats employees and suppliers and many of the smaller towns it’s in, and the extreme unwalkability of its national footprint (even if the Renton store is just average for the retailers there). Fred Meyer used to be my go-to big-box store and had the lowest-price food, but the way it treats its customers in the past decade has soured me on it. Target I go to sometimes, but I only have to once a year or less, so I don’t go more often than that. This has nothing to do with whether you drive or take transit to shop, but it’s one reason transit riders and Seattle residents may shop at big-box stores Renton less than average.

          “I don’t get why the Link extension to Lynnwood gets to be so fast but South King riders have to slug through for 40 mins from the airport for the same distance”

          Because Sound Transit had a different philosophy when the Rainier Valley segment was designed in the 1990s. It was the first segment, and ST’s philosophy then was that grade separation was justified only when hills/barriers required it. A flat valley floor could be surface, so it must be surface to minimize capital costs. We begged ST to elevate it or put it underground on MLK so that it could run at maximum speed, but ST refused to.

          Later, starting with Tukwila, every city it went through objected to a surface alignment, and the feedback said people were willing to pay for grade separation. That’s why Tukwila is elevated, Roosevelt is underground, etc. Because the city government demanded it or wouldn’t permit it street-running, but Seattle hadn’t demanded it in Rainier Valley or SODO. Some say that’s because Rainier Valley was lower-income/minority so didn’t have the political clout, but it’s also because of a philosophical shift at Sound Transit on surface alignments. Being the first sometimes means you get the worst, before mistakes have been recognized and corrected.

          By ST2, everything was grade-separated by default. Bel-Red was later lowered to the surface because Bellevue begged ST to economize elsewhere in East King to pay for half of the City Hall tunnel it wanted. Everywhere else is grade-separated, and I think everything in ST3 is.

      14. “If one is on Rainier to reach say Walmart currently one just takes the route 106 straight there.”

          Uhhh… You do realize that neither Route 106 or Route 107 goes by any of these stores, right? They do stop three blocks from Fred Meyer in one direction but it’s four blocks in the other (the return trip with shopping bags). Walmart is a pretty far walk and transit directions suggest a transfer and Target is a transfer within Renton.

          In fairness, I will note that the relocated Renton TC will put the stops closer to Fred Meyer and Walmart but Target will clearly take longer to reach.

          Once a rider is on a Renton-bound bus at Rainier Beach, the Route 107 schedules say that it’s about 29 to 31 minutes to the TC in Renton. Route 106 appears to be slightly faster so say 25 minutes. Adding walk or transfers in Renton and adding transferring at Henderson and someone living north of Rainier Beach along Rainier Ave (say Hillman City) and the trip easily reaches or exceeds an hour one way. All for a trip to somewhere less than five miles away.

          That’s not really practical when carrying goods that need refrigeration.

          Meanwhile, it’s just a 29 minute ride on Route 101 from SODO Link Station to the Renton TC on Route 101. But there is no crosstown bus to get to Route 101 anywhere south of the SODO Link station. If a connection was available, the trip on a Route 101 path would take just about 15 minutes from Rainier Beach Link.

          I think you’re conflating connecting at Rainier Beach Link with truncating a route there. While it’s possible, I’m not saying that at all. I’m just saying that a new transit center at Rainier Beach with reversal capabilities would provide the opportunity to pull buses off I-5 and return in maybe a 5 minute time addition — and the stop would serve lots more transit riders than doing the same thing at other I-5 station stops. And such a transit center would enable lots of other local service changes too.

      15. @Al S

          Are you suggesting a 5-10 minute detour for every northbound I-5 route headed to Seattle?

      16. “Are you suggesting a 5-10 minute detour for every northbound I-5 route headed to Seattle?”

          No. I’m suggesting it for some routes or runs but not every route or run. And certainly a more rapid way for a bus to get to or from I-5 while stopping would make stopping more viable.

          It makes more sense to stop in midday or evenings or weekends when the share of riders going to or from work is less. For example, on a Saturday a Route 101 bus that stops at Rainier Beach Link could be very popular for SE Seattle residents. It also seems like a good idea for the proposed ST overnight service specifically mentioned here.

      17. > I think you’re conflating connecting at Rainier Beach Link with truncating a route there. While it’s possible, I’m not saying that at all. I’m just saying that a new transit center at Rainier Beach with reversal capabilities would provide the opportunity to pull buses off I-5

          @Al the entire point of building a transit center is to truncate bus routes there. Typically it’s a trade off for higher frequency and easier transfers. That’s like the whole point. I don’t know why you’re saying you want to build the transit center and not truncate. Then what was the point of building it.

          > Meanwhile, it’s just a 29 minute ride on Route 101 from SODO Link Station to the Renton TC on Route 101. But there is no crosstown bus to get to Route 101 anywhere south of the SODO Link station. If a connection was available, the trip on a Route 101 path would take just about 15 minutes from Rainier Beach Link.

          Okay but how would you get the 101 to rainier beach? And what would be the total transit time.

          In order to get the 101 to rainier beach it’ll have to exit the freeway likely adding around 10 minutes so from downtown Seattle to Renton is likely more like 40 minutes. And then let’s say one is at mt baker they then take the train to rainier beach 10 minutes then take the 101 down to Renton. I checked Google Maps it’d take like 15 minutes. But at that point you could also just use the route 106 which takes 18 minutes to reach Renton transit center

          It really only saves like 3 minutes and didn’t even take into account like the transfer time versus just staying on the route 106.

          It’d only really save time if you are planning on modifying the 101 or 106 to run further south.

          Look Al I haven’t really asked for something arduous here. A single trip example of how the transit center would improve transit times would help prove your point but I haven’t really seen one yet.

      18. “the entire point of building a transit center is to truncate bus routes there.”

          The point of a transit center is that several routes transfer there with all the stops next to each other, so you don’t have to go hunting for the stop or keep track of which routes stop on which streets. That’s how the Bellevue Transit Center functioned when it opened in the early 80s and I still think it’s the best model of one. Before that the routes made an arbitrary spagetti in downtown Bellevue, with this route on one block, this route on another block, etc. Layover space is a non-passenger issue so it can go anywhere outside the transit center. Making the layover function take over the transit center is bad for passengers. Look at the Issaquah TC: you have to transfer in the middle of nowhere with nothing to walk to and a car-infrastructure hell around you, while the actual destinations people are going to are a mile away, and further if you’re going east.

      19. I think a large transfer center at BAR would be ideal, with HOV stops and a Sounder station.

          I agree. This would make the station worth building. Some buses would stop there and continue their express to downtown. Other buses would just be truncated there. If there are enough of the former you can have more of the latter. For example if the 101 and 150 stop there then truncating the 59x buses is no big deal. Riders can take those express buses to downtown or Link or even Sounder (when it is running).

      20. “the entire point of building a transit center is to truncate bus routes there.”

          Even if that is true that doesn’t mean that *all* buses are truncated there. For example at Northgate Transit Center they’ve always had buses that just keep going (and buses that terminate there).

          I think it’s rather obvious that the biggest problem about express buses stopping at Rainier Beach is a lack of a decent transit center with reversal capabilities there.

          I don’t that is obvious at all. It is highly like a bus can layover there and turn around. That is the plan for the future RapidRide R. Furthermore, a bus like the 101 would be better off going to the actual Rainier Beach (where there is a connection to the 7). There is an *existing* layover and turnaround there. This really isn’t an issue.

          The big issue is that it would take longer for riders heading downtown. To quote the slides, it would “introduce substantial time increases during most time periods”. It is a reasonable trade-off. I can see it both ways. Truncating gets an additional connection to both Link and the 7 as well as Rainier Beach itself. It also saves the agency money (which can be put back into running buses more often). But existing riders might hate it. They would be unhappy having to transfer and wait for the train.

          The best solution is the one John mentioned. That gets you the connection to Link and the express to downtown. Even a freeway station would be beneficial. That gets you all the connections but the buses just keep going. But with a layover (AKA transit center) some buses could terminate there, saving the agency (or agencies) money.

      21. “the entire point of building a transit center is to truncate bus routes there.”

          I think you’re wrong, WL. The entire point of building a transit center is to provide a safe place for several buses to lay over and riders to easily make transfers. Truncation can be part of that — but many routes running through our transit centers do not terminate there (many are typically even the most frequent routes like Route 7 and 106 at Mt Baker) and many route end points are not at transit centers.

          And there already has been a long-term intent to terminate RapidRide R at Rainier Beach Link. So there’s your route terminus.

          And I’m not suggesting an ST station glass palace. Rainier Beach Station already has restrooms for driver breaks! Maybe it’s a simple as finding a place to widen one side of MLK to provide a place for buses and install good shelters and lighting and info signs — and to walk to the platform without having to cross at a very busy and dangerous Henderson/ MLK intersection.

          I’ve explained the problem from specific points like Hillman City as well as identified 3 major retailers in Renton. I don’t know why you say that I haven’t been specific enough.

          But if you want to have an example, I’ll give you this one:

          Extend RapidRide I to Rainier Beach Link using SR 900 and terminate it at this transit center. Get the additional service hours by eliminating some but not most of the Route 101 runs that the RapidRide I extension would then cover — especially at off-peak hours. With RapidRide R from Hillman City, that’s say an initial average 5 minute wait for RapidRide R, a 10 minute ride to the TC, an average 5 minute wait at the new TC for RapidRide I and a 15 minute ride to Fred Meyer. That a reduction from 55 minutes to an hour to 35 minutes. That’s at least a 20 minute savings.

          Keep in mind that the SODO busway is planned to close with West Seattle Link construction within 2-3 years. Route 101 will no longer be as fast.

          Something else to mention is that the same items at Mt Baker QFC are routinely more expensive than Renton Fred Meyer even though both are owned by the same company.

      22. > With RapidRide R from Hillman City, that’s say an initial average 5 minute wait for RapidRide R, a 10 minute ride to the TC, an average 5 minute wait at the new TC for RapidRide I and a 15 minute ride to Fred Meyer. That a reduction from 55 minutes to an hour to 35 minutes. That’s at least a 20 minute savings.

          If you are closer to mlk way you can just take route 106. it will get there in 30 minutes then a 6 minute walk. if you are closer to rainier then take route 7 for 9 minutes wait for transfer 10 minutes then take route 107 for 24 minutes for a total of 45 minutes, and again a 4 minute walk.

          though technically one could also take the route 7 (10 min) and route 106 (15 min) the problem is that sometimes route 106 has a longer wait/transfer time.

          honestly it could looks like most of it could be achieved by just having more frequency on 106 and less on 107

      23. “I think a large transfer center at BAR would be ideal, with HOV stops and a Sounder station.

          “I agree. This would make the station worth building.”

          I think having the transfer point at BAR has some challenges that could make the option worse.

          If the BAR station moves to 172nd and E Marginal Way, that’s a far distance from Route 101 as well as adds a long signal wait at the BAR and East Marginal Way intersection. I could see Rainier Beach not taking longer than that detour.

          It would however be better for Route 150 as that route could just stay on the same street and get on or on I-5 at the BAR ramps. It would be better for I-5 express buses too.

          The real disadvantage would be with buses coming from SE Seattle. Any bus route in SE Seattle would have to travel quite a bit to get to the BAR station. I doubt Metro would want to add those route segments. Plus it would add at least 5 minutes to any SE Seattle rider so it would be more time consuming even if there was a bus.

          The connectivity with SE Seattle is why I think enhancing transfers ant Rainier Beach Link with better bus access would be preferable.

      24. @Al S

          BAR with an HOV exit (or flyer stops) was assuming the original station location between I-5 and the railroad tracks.

          Detouring off the I-5 corridor or truncating at a station would lead to much longer travel times to downtown Seattle.

      25. I’m hoping the new Renton transit center area somehow gets some dense housing and small walk-up ground-floor shops. Not just long walks across surface parking lots to big-box stores.

      26. Mike Orr: the Rainier Beach Link station is not yet a bus route terminal. It lacks layover and turnaround loop. Before Route 107 was extended to Beacon Hill Link, it looped back to lay east of Rainier Avenue South near where Route 7 lays. in the teens, SDOT looked at using the SCL parcel. The R Line looked at going around the block to the north. In the aughts, Metro and SDOT disagreed about laying Route 7 on South Henderson Street; SDOT wanted a bike facility through the middle of it. Operator fallback would reduce the length of curb space needed.

      27. “If you are closer to mlk way you can just take route 106. it will get there in 30 minutes then a 6 minute walk.”

          It’s much more than a 6 minute walk to get 1/2 mile from the Hillman City corner to MLK and Orcas. It’s a half mile. Then there are streets to cross at singaluzed intersections. Plus there’s a small hill too.

   6. It could be replaced with an automated streetcar serving the endpoints

      SKR, you’re going to have a very hard time convincing ST or Metro to automate a street car along Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard. Very hard. The insurance issues would be through the roof. It would become an immediate lawsuit-magnet.

      I am all for automation where pedestrians can’t wander onto the guideway and get sliced up, where drivers can’t turn their cars right in front of a train and get pulverized. From the junction just south of IDS to however far the Link Spine is finally built to the north, it should be automated. Assuming, of course, that ST holds to its commitment to full grade-separation.

      The new Ballard line should be automated, and it it’s extended that should be automated. But you’re not going to get automation down the middle of a urban street.

      1. Given autonomous taxis are capable of driving on the Boulevard in parallel Link, with the exact same pedestrian risks, any hesitancy from staff is simply a generational issue. As Import People become more familiar with autonomous vehicles operating elsewhere, they will challenge local staff on this assumptions.

         If you are concerned about lawsuits, change the law. That objection is as stupid as when ST would point to the fire code on why they had to do X* with an underground station – when you are spending billions, don’t consider state & local laws a fixed obstacle.

         *I don’t recall the specific issue, but when I was at ST, there was some fire code issue that was driving significant cost (might have been in the DSTT), and what the fire code required was something that made no sense for a rail station and was inconsistent with best practices elsewhere. When I suggested that we just work with the state to adjust the fire code specific for a rail facility, the engineering team looked at me as if I was suggesting them to turn lead into gold.

   7. To me and my thoughts is Route 577 replace by 1 line and route 578 replaced a new route 598 which will run between Puyallup-Sumner-Auburn-Kent-Seattle with better frequent service because the light rail is already going to do the work from Federal Way to Seattle there should be no buses running to Seattle as a replacement service and all the 590s serious from Tacoma can remain the same because those routes doesn’t stop right away and I can tell Tacoma residence doesn’t want to see themselves transferring which will make it a super long trip.

3. It’s great that the 574 is getting 15 minute service and that the 535 is getting weekend service.

   Perhaps the 545 should get moved to better serve SLU if it’s going to continue as-is (maybe exit Mercer to Fairview)? Looking at timetables the 545 will save a decent amount of time for people headed to the northern end of downtown. It’s 20-32 minutes from Westlake to Microsoft via the 545 versus ~35 via Link.

   The 542’s time savings are far more dramatic. UW to Microsoft is 14-21 minutes via the 542 versus ~42 via Link.

   1. “Perhaps the 545 should get moved to better serve SLU if it’s going to continue as-is (maybe exit Mercer to Fairview)?”

      I think it should. The south of downtown, the 545 simply duplicates Link and offers no time savings (it takes a long time to get from one end of downtown to the other on a bus).

      1. Why does the 545 need to keep the 5th ave tail with the link duplication? Can’t it turnaround like the 550 on 5th pike st or the 554 on 4th Stewart?

         And reinvest the time savings either into the 545 itself or the 542 (however marginal)?

         Serving Denny and QA would certainly bog the 545 down in traffic without the westbound bus lane making it unreliable an non-competitive to the Link.

         Serving SLU eastbound will likely not serve peak traffic interests (4.30-6pm) if it doesn’t maintain the 10 min peak headway (due to packed buses before entering SLU). It would be a great alternative during non-peak though truly complementing link while serving 520, SLU, and Seattle connections to Link.

4. We’re getting into a lot of topics a revenue-neutral ST Express restructure can’t address, like what Metro should or shouldn’t do in Renton and Rainier Beach. We can and do debate those all the time. But what’s really needed now is evaluating the ST Express proposal, and possible alternatives to it, and putting those suggestions in this article, so that they’ll be all together as a reference when people fill out the feedback form. So let’s hear some more about ST Express.

   1. why should it be cost-neutral? the fleet is pretty fixed. ST could spend more hours. ST3 is delayed. For decades, ST has been spending too little on service.

5. Another question, if ST is willing to spend a significant chunk of money on new service, why no new trips on the 560? At the times that my flights typically get in, the 560 is reduced to once per hour. The weekend schedule really needs to run the bus at least every half hour. The 560 also serves a future STRIDE corridor.

   1. That gets into the question, is it better to dedicate a large chunk of service hours to night owls, or to fill in the gaps where routes like the 560 and 535 don’t have 15-minute service? I’m half inclined toward the latter, although I do see the value of 24-hour service to all quarters of the region. And it’s a fair point that it’s easier to wait an hour in the daytime than six hours at night when it’s dark and cold and everything is closed. I’ve felt that sometimes, or not gone to evening events because there’s no way to get back on transit until the next morning or Monday morning.

      1. yes. If those corridors are worth Stride, why are they not worth frequent bus service?

6. The funny thing about this for me personally is that since the Federal Way alignment was decided in 2015, I’ve been lamenting the impending loss of fast express bus service (being a Seattle U student at the time, I relied on this service 7 days/week). Over the 10 years since, I’ve grown more comfortable with having longer trips considering the expansion of potential destinations from… basically just Seattle, with other incidental ones.

   In a twist of irony, 2015 me is thrilled with this, and 2025 me is pretty disappointed. ST used to have an all day bus from Tacoma to east Pierce County, solid bus service up and down the 167/405 corridor all day into the 10pm hour, a Sounder-timed express to Bellevue, and service to South Lake Union from Kirkland and Redmond. Now it may never have any of these again, because they are running Seattle buses next to other Seattle buses, next to Seattle trains.

   Another thing is it configures remaining service suboptimally. Route 542 won’t be frequent at all because people didn’t want to lose the 545. Taking the 542 and transferring to Link at UW could be faster than riding the 2 Line all the way down, but people are understandably uncomfortable with that transfer due to how much slower it is than the 545. However, people would be a lot more comfortable with it if they got to experience both the 1 and 2 lines running to UW, which would be the case after the restructure, but that hasn’t happened yet, so (for now at least) it seems like they are getting their wish of keeping the 545.

   If the Pierce County buses remain essentially the same, that’ll leave the whole area ripe for a “middle ground” restructure by adding a federal way stop to the 594 and cutting back the 577/578. One particular aspect of the 577/578 is that the quality of Pierce Transit’s operation of these routes have really degraded over the years. I think this will drive a lot more riders from the 577/578 to Link than you might expect given the time competitiveness on paper.

   1. “Route 542 won’t be frequent at all because people didn’t want to lose the 545”

      You’ll still have that option westbound, where the 542 and 545 serve the same stop and you can take whichever one comes first. Sometimes there’s a single-direction bias that makes you take an express bus one way but not the other. I’ve been doing that with Lake Hills. I’ll take the 545 eastbound to Redmond Tech midday when there’s little traffic, but I won’t take it westbound in the afternoon because I’m allergic to the severe traffic congestion on western 520 and I-5. But I do take the 542 westbound sometimes when it’s running because it gets off the freeway before that crawling starts, or take the 542 or 545 westbound when I have a reasonable chance the 542 will come first or within 10 minutes. Another reason I’m inclined to take the 545 only eastbound is the stop is closer to to the 245 stop on 156th, whereas westbound I have to cross both 156th and walk up to 40th and across the freeway and wait at a freeway stop (ugh). So all these are factors.

      There’s also a bias if one way is train+bus and the other way is bus+train. Transferring to a bus usually has a longer potential wait, and even longer if the bus is late. Whereas transferring to Link is just fine; it will usually come in 5 or 10 minutes and it’s a more pleasant place to wait.

      You have a point that people are basing this on they don’t know what Link’s travel time will be; it wasn’t as clear a few years ago; and people can’t try Link on the ground before they decide because it hasn’t opened yet. That gives people fear that Link might be bad and they’ll be really frustrated forever if the bus routes are truncated, and they’re not convinced a frequent 542 will be better than a 545 directly to downtown Seattle.

      But with the way these Link openings and this restructure are scheduled, people will have an unprecedented opportunity to vote with their feet and take either Link or the 545 or try both options, or Link or the 577/578, etc. We’ll see what people ultimately do when they settle down after a few months, and it may be surprising. Maybe people will think sitting on Link for longer isn’t so bad after all, especially with Link coming every 8-10 minutes all day and evening so you don’t have to think about waiting, and the smoother ride, and not being in a vehicle on a freeway, etc. Or maybe everybody will shun Link because they really want that promise of a 35-minute bus ride, even if they have to hope there’s no unusual congestion or lane closures. It will probably be in between, but will it be 60/40 or 70/30 or what? And which way?

      But after the restructure has been running in a year or two. there could be clear patterns, which could allow ST to reduce the parallel bus service or switch from articulated buses to single buses, with fewer complaints than they’d get now. Or people may get so keen on frequent 542 service that they say enough with the 545, but only after they’ve all been running in parallel for a year or two.

      1. This is a good point about the 542/545, it is the case that people will have the option to try out 542 + 1 or 2 Line. They can even get a feel for it now if they consider that if they’d get a 2 Line train if their wait for a 1 Line train is more than 4 or 5 minutes. What’s harder to get a feel for is the effect of a more frequent 542.

         One frustrating thing about the timing of these Sound Transit Express changes is that it is delayed enough for people to have a lot of time with the Link extensions before the buses change, but the bus changes won’t be in response to riders’ experience with the new trains. The feedback is happening right now. So it’s kind of the worst of both worlds, where people will have to wait a long time for bus improvements, but those improvements will still be based on a pre-2 Line view of the network. I’d almost prefer delaying the bus changes to fall 2027 if the changes are essentially status quo. Makes me think we could see another round of major change proposals farther in the future once new service patterns are settled.

      2. This is just the 2026 operational plan, not a long-term commitment. The 2027 or 2028 operational plans could be different. It will be easier to argue for that once the Link openings have occurred and the World Cup is over. ST seems afraid to change ST Express before the World Cup, because its advantages and problems are well-known and can be coped with, and it’s a fallback in case Link has one of its breakdowns.

      3. Stride 1 and 2 will also trigger restructures, and that could be an opportunity for making adjustments even further out such as Redmond.

      4. Yeah, that makes some sense. It seems weird think about the “real” restructure around the opening of Federal Way Link, or the cross-lake connection, happening years later unlike Northgate or Lynnwood which happened essentially on day 1 (asterisk on Lynnwood due to the 2 line delays, but that’s different).

         I’d say it’s unprecedented, but the restructure of the 255 to UW in 2020 definitely counts. And like you said, there are Stride lines which could trigger additional changes.

   2. “One particular aspect of the 577/578 is that the quality of Pierce Transit’s operation of these routes have really degraded over the years.”

      How has it degraded? I’ve only ridden them a few times in the past two decades. Has the 594 similarly degraded?

      1. This admittedly is all anecdotal, but I regularly notice when I go to Federal Way that the 577 and 578 outbound are often a mix of 20-30 minutes late buses and on-time buses, even in normal rush-hour traffic conditions. The effect is often obscured by the high combined frequency (so people aren’t often actually waiting 20+ minutes) but it does make the schedule essentially random. By contrast, the 177 seems to be well run, so when I go to Federal Way, I try to time it right with the 177 now. Not sure if 59X buses are similar, but I don’t see why they wouldn’t be.

         Another thing I’d call a degradation is the weird way they do real-time vehicle updates. It makes the vehicles not show up right in OneBusAway, or show the correct location but incorrectly reporting “0 seconds late.” This doesn’t really affect service, but it does affect the rider experience quite a bit.

      2. That has been happening all over Metro since 2022, such as the 8, 62, 131, and 132, and to a lesser extent all the Pike/Pine routes. Congestion has increased, and that causes lateness and bus bunching and car collisions that close lanes. Metro doesn’t have the drivers/money to pad the schedule and have enough standby buses to compensate for this, especially not network-wide. It did in the mid 2010s with Seattle’s larger transit levy and the improving economy, but that hasn’t been replicated in the 2020s yet. Pierce Transit and the 577/578 in I-5 congestion may be in a similar situation.

         I don’t know what real-time vehicle updates means. Both Metro and ST have been having trouble keeping buses visible in One Bus Away and their own next-arrival displays. Sometimes a few runs are invisible and the display just says the “scheduled run”; sometimes all of them are. Sometimes it says a bus just served your stop when it never came, or it comes five or ten minutes later.

      3. There’s definitely some of that going on, but it also it’s not really like Metro. It doesn’t usually manifest as bus bunching, though it sometimes does. It’s just more random. My guess on this is that it has to do with the way Pierce Transit schedules trip blocks. They have a ton of random-looking deadheads from a 560 in Bellevue to a 595 in Seattle, or a 574 in SeaTac to 578 in Seattle. Every agency does some of this, but Pierce Transit has these weird looking blocks all day long on both ST and local buses. So I’m guessing a lot of it has to do with that a 577 might come from Lakewood, and the adjacent 578 might come from Bellevue, with completely different sources and amounts of delay. This compares to Metro where a 5 essentially always turns into a 21, a 107 turns into a 148, and a 177 or 162 always comes from South Base.

         As for OBA, it does a weird thing where it’ll show all the vehicles as gray (scheduled), but shows their location correctly. When you tap on the vehicle, it’ll show the delay as 11 minutes or whatever, but this also tends to be out of date or just incorrect. Metro actually does an excellent job at keeping real-time data operational and correct by comparison.

      4. Are some of the routes 588-578 live looped? That would kill reliability.
         Since fall 2012, the Pike-Pine routes have been live looped (e.g., routes 10, 11, 47). Route 49 lost its layover on Pike Street nearside 3rd Avenue to societal issues.
         SDOT has taken lanes for PBL and left bus routes behind in more congestion; see Broadway, 2nd and 4th avenues, Roosevelt Way NE, NE 65th Street, Pike and Pine streets.
         SDOT took a lane from 5th Avenue for the 5th/6th avenues transit pathway (routes 255, 252, 257, 311); that increased congestion for inbound Route 545 on 5th Avenue. The routes are gone but the restriping remains.
         During U Link, 2016-2021, routes 71, 73-373, and 78 were live looped around the Pacific Triangle.

7. I am going to be a strange outliner here but ST, Metro, and PT really should get an express bus to Enumclaw/Black Diamond to Seattle, Orting to Seattle, even if they are peak only but those residents really need some sort of service as it doesn’t look like Sounder will ever reach Orting, nevermind likely beyond Dupont.

   1. The 907 runs hourly from Black Diamond to Renton TC, taking 40 minutes against 27 minutes by car right now. That’s good time. It should probably be more frequent, though, and have better-guaranteed transfers from the 101 for people coming from Seattle?

      1. The way Black Diamond is growing, more service can’t come soon enough!

      2. Ridership is pretty low on the 907. One of the big issues with areas like Black Diamond is that there are no HOV lanes. This makes them like Monroe. You would probably get good peak ridership with a bus that runs along the corridor if not for the fact that it would be stuck in the same traffic as all the cars. At best it can be faster towards the end of the journey (as it approaches Seattle). A lot of people just drive.

         The 915 connects to Enumclaw and runs about twice as often as the 907. It gets more than three times as many riders.

   2. It’s hard to argue for an express from Black Diamond/Enumclaw to downtown Seattle when they’re so small and far and Renton Transit Center is halfway in between. There should be more frequent service between Enumclaw and Renton all day and evening every day, and it’s in Metro’s 2050 plan, but the plan is unfunded at this point, and King County has spent nine years not having a levy to fully implement it. Corridor 2615 is an Express from Enumclaw to Renton, and those are nominally described as every 30 minutes until 7pm every day. I’ve also heard talk about transit-priority lanes on that highway someday, although that was in the 2010s and I don’t remember what they envisioned. It depended on that levy that still hasn’t happened. So those are possibilities to press your elected officials and Metro on.

      Current Black Diamond service is the 907 van to Renton, hourly from 8-9am to 4-5pm weekdays only. Enumclaw has the 915 van to Auburn every 40-80 minutes from 5am-7pm weekdays and every 2 hours from 10am to 6pm Saturdays. That reminds me of Issaquah in the 1980s. But Issaquah eventually got more service, and Black Diamond and Enumclaw might get improvements someday too.

      Orting is in ST’s long-range plan for high-capacity transit at some point, which could be in the form of BRT or a DMU/EMU train to a transfer hub in Pierce County. The earliest ST could consider it is ST4 in the 2040s. Orting doesn’t have PT local transit because the PT district shrank in the 2010s to exclude the southeastern area whose “No” votes were taking down levies to increase service. At least, that’s why Buckley, Bonney Lake and Sumner are no longer in PT. I don’t know for sure that Orting was in the PT service area then but I assume it was.

      1. I have long been astounded at the fact that Sumner, Bonney Lake, Buckley, and Orting aren’t part of Pierce Transit. They have grown so much in recent years that it is time to bring the issue of being in Pierce Transit back before the voters of those communities. I reckon they might just be interested in having local bus service again. Other areas of Pierce County with little or no local bus service, such as Graham, the Key Peninsula, and Fredrickson, might just be interested too.

      2. They were in Pierce Transit until the mid 2010s, when a referendum to contract the PT service area was passed. Buckley had an hourly route to downtown Tacoma, a long slow milk run, for whatever it was worth. Sumner had something. I’m not sure if Orting and Fredrickson were in the district.

         The reason for the referendum was that these areas No votes were bringing PT expansion levies down. So PT could never improve service because the levies always failed, and the need for more service in Tacoma and Lakewood was getting ever more acute because they were growing. Tacoma and Lakewood kept voting Yes on the levies but kept getting outvoted by the exurban eastern/southeastern part of the district.

         Ironically, after PT contracted the district so that levies would have a better chance of passing, it has never actually offered such a levy since then, so PT service has stagnated anyway, and its far below what cities with its population size should have. Most routes are still 30-60 minutes.

         I don’t know whether eastern/southeastern Pierce might be willing to reconsider PT taxes now. I know Sumner officials and some residents regretted the dog caught the car and they lost local bus service. Sumner and Orting are now in a position of having regional ST service but not local service. ST had to create an ST Express route to get Bonney Lake to Sounder, since Sounder was predicated on those taxpayers and they should have some way to get to the train.

   3. I hope Sounder does eventually make its way down further south. Not just to Dupont, but also to Olympia. Traffic on I-5 isn’t getting any better with time. More options are needed to connect these communities.

      1. The tough part about Olympia is that the train station isn’t in the city itself. Even an express bus (with no stops along the way) would take about 20 minutes to get to downtown. It probably makes more sense to run express buses from Olympia to Lakewood and try and time them with the train (at least southbound). If and when the train gets to Dupont you would run them from there.

8. This is what I have a thought as of scenario
   Route 594 will stop at Federal Way replacing portion of route 577 and 578 and a new route 588 which will replace partially routes 566 and 578 running between Puyallup station Sumner station Auburn station Kent station and directly SR 167 I-405 And I-5 To Downtown Seattle, this would be a smooth trip for Kent riders for heading to downtown instead of have to be bottling with the route 150. And just have the route 574 retired because route 594 will do the work for that route. Riders who use routes 578 between Federal Way and Auburn could use King county Metro route 181.

   1. I think a lot of people support the same sort of thing. It gets a bit complicated to talk about because of the route numbers. I like to think of it in terms of corridors. I think the following would be a good set of routes for ST:

      1) Lakewood/Tacoma/Federal Way/Seattle
      2) Puyallup/Sumner/Auburn/Federal Way
      3) Puyallup/Sumner/Auburn/Kent/Seattle

      There are issues with cost. In an ideal world we run all of these every fifteen minutes all day long but that isn’t realistic. In general, the farther away you are, the less important frequency is. Ridership tends to go down while costs go up the farther away you go as well. Running an express bus from Puyallup to Seattle every fifteen minutes seems like a stretch. Running an express bus from Kent to Seattle every fifteen minutes seems like it would be one of the most cost effective buses that ST runs. With that in mind I propose additional routes that are basically truncated versions:

      4) Kent/Seattle
      5) Tacoma/Federal Way/Seattle

      All the buses would run every half hour. Some riders would have more frequent service than others. The following trips would be every fifteen minutes:

      * Tacoma to Federal Way
      * Federal Way to Seattle
      * Tacoma to Seattle
      * Kent to Seattle
      * Puyallup to Sumner
      * Puyallup to Auburn
      * Sumner to Auburn

      Every other trip combination would be every half hour. I think this is affordable but I haven’t done the math. If not, then the buses can run every forty minutes. This means that most of the trips run every twenty minutes. The disadvantage of this is that running a bus every forty minutes is harder to keep track of. There are other options for saving money. It is likely the buses would run less frequently at night — if money is tight then the definition of “night” can be earlier.

      1. Yeah but I think they should just get rid of Route 578 and just replace as a route 588 almost same version with Route 578 from Puyallup to Seattle but except not going to Federal Way via I-5 and sr18 instead that new route will use i-405 sr167 Kent station and had to Auburn and do the rest of current 578. Auburn to Federal Way already covers King county Metro route 181

      2. I think they should just get rid of Route 578

         I think there is value in connecting buses to Federal Way. That is why I proposed the second bus (which is a truncated version of the 578). Back in the day, about 100 riders would use the bus as a connection to Federal Way from Puyallup, Sumner or Auburn. That was before Link.

         That being said, it is highly likely most of those riders came from Auburn. So I could see a smaller version just from Auburn. That means changing the second bus to just Auburn/Federal Way. There is another option that does the reverse. It assumes Link is preferred. In that case the third bus ends in Auburn (and the other buses remain the same). That would mean someone in Puyallup or Sumner would have to transfer to get to Seattle (either via the express bus in Auburn or Link at Federal Way). But it does mean those riders would have a simple two-seat ride to the airport (or other Link destinations). In both cases you reduce the number of buses running between Puyallup/Sumner/Auburn (which take a while).

9. @Mike Orr,

   “In 3 months the Federal Way Link extension will open”

   Ah, no. FWLE opens Dec 6th, which is a little less than 2 months away.

   This is why countdown clocks are important. Because they keep people informed as to important dates and the time remaining to major transit improvements.

   There was a time when this blog put the countdown clock right on the main page so everyone could see it and stay informed. But today? Nope.

   1. I was worried about you Lazarus. You normally complain when Metro doesn’t truncate the buses. Here ST is running numerous expresses and not a word. I guess it is different if it is ST, not Metro.

   2. > countdown clock

      Every time you complain about the lack of a countdown clock, I’m less interested in adding one. Look, STB is 100% free for readers, 100% volunteer-run, and 100% runs on WordPress 6.8. If you want to volunteer some lines of countdown clock code for the homepage, feel free to email it to contact at seattletransitblog.com.

      Further discussion of countdown clock (especially the lack thereof) is off-topic for this post, and I’m inclined to begin considering it off-topic for Open Threads.

      1. Yeah, Lazarus is the only one who wants a countdown clock. Yet he refuses to go to one that someone made, just for him: https://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/generic?iso=20251206T11&p0=234&msg=Federal+Way+Link+Extension&font=cursive&csz=1. We keep pointing out where it is, but he keeps asking for it. It is worth noting that on this very webpage the author mentioned when Lynnwood Link opens (December, 2025). It is also extremely easy to find out when the station opens if you want to know the exact date.

10. There are key bullet point items in the document that explain Sound Transit’s thinking with regards to the express buses:

    • Discontinue service in light rail corridors that does not offer substantial travel time benefits over Link
    • Maintain service in high ridership corridors where Link operates, but would introduce substantial travel time increases during most time periods

    The key word here is “substantial”. How much time do you have to save before it is considered “substantial”. This is a judgement call and there are trade-offs either way. Express service can save riders a lot of time. On the other hand, if a bus duplicates Link then it means buses can’t run as often or there are fewer routes.

    There is another consideration as well. Express buses (that duplicate Link to some degree) can connect to Link along the way. This is the case with the 542 and 545. They serve various bus stops in Redmond (not close to Link stations). Then they connect to Link before running express (to the UW or Downtown Seattle). Riders heading to those destinations save time but riders heading to Downtown Bellevue (or another East Link destination) save time as well. This is also the case with the 510. It runs from Everett to Downtown Seattle, stopping at only South Everett and Mountlake Terrace. By stopping at Mountlake Terrace the riders from Mountlake Terrace can get an express to Seattle. More importantly riders from Everett can transfer to Link and get to Link destinations (like the UW).

    In contrast, the buses from the south don’t do that, which I find very surprising. As a result, ST lacks express service or duplicates it. This again means that buses don’t run as often (or not at all). It would take very little time for the 594 (which runs every half hour) to stop at the Federal Way station. By doing so, Federal Way riders would have express bus service to Downtown Seattle twice as often (every fifteen minutes midday) at no extra cost. At the same time, there would be no need for one of the truncated 574 buses. This is a substantial savings that could go into running other buses more often or brand new routes. The savings would not pay for a lot of trips from Lakewood to Seattle but that’s because getting from Lakewood to Tacoma takes a while. But you could run a bus from Tacoma to Downtown Seattle to complement the 594, providing fifteen minute service between the two cities most of the day.

    But I could also see new routes. Maybe for longer trips (Seattle to Tacoma) frequency isn’t important. Half hour service midday is good enough. Maybe other bus routes would add more value.

    1. I see the cross-lake 2 Line, the doubling of link frequency north of Downtown Seattle and Federal Way extension openings (in addition to recent openings of the Eastside 2 Line and Lynnwood Link) as so significant that there’s bound to be places where ridership on ST Express routes change in unexpected ways — steady, up or down.

       For example, I could see a UW student from the Eastside that’s in the U District choosing Link to get back there rather than getting off after one stop at UW and making the trek out of the station to get a 520 bus. The same is probably true for that student if they’re going home to Federal Way (but they would consider a transfer at SODO instead, which is a level transfer).

       Even though ST says now that they’re keeping several ST express routes alive, I suspect that the ultimate response will be based on new ridership boardings after several months to a few years .

       I feel like the “parallel to Link when it’s faster” approach to keeping a route is politically playing it safe in this plan. But if those routes don’t produce enough ridership I think that some routes will start to disappear or get cut back in 2027 or 2028 — or they’ll become more permanent if the ridership holds or increases.

       And since ST doesn’t provide a station entry/ exit ridership table, it’s tough to tell how many ST Express riders could shift anyway. Tapping off no longer happens so Orca can’t help with that like before. ST could pay for such data with a Bluetooth sample and maybe they have, but results from one have not been presented.

       1. You bring up another important point: transfers. Sometimes this favors Link, sometimes it doesn’t. For example with the 510, bus riders avoid a transfer if they are headed downtown. That is also true with most of the buses from the south. The East Side is a bit more complicated. It is worth noting that the 542 and 545 serve some stops that are nowhere near the station. So even though they run “Redmond to UW” or “Redmond to Downtown” there are some trips where the rider saves a transfer by taking one of those buses.

          But it is also easy to see combinations where Link saves a transfer. A rider from Northgate headed to Bellevue is likely to just stay on the same train (if they caught a 2 Line). Even if they need to transfer to the 2 Line a same-station transfer is much easier than dealing with UW Station. The situation at Federal Way is especially interesting. The bus is much faster but a lot less frequent. If you are headed to say, the UW, do you take the bus and transfer or do you just take Link?

11. Of course it would eliminate 554 and enhance 556.
    The new 554 from previously eastside restructure looks a lot more like 556 but making all the Issaquah stops 554 is making.
    It would help 270 during the peak hours if some 556 trips can still go to U-District. Unfortunately it won’t happen.

    1. It’s just an arbitrary number change. It was called 554 in the first couple East Link restructure proposals probably because that was the all-day route people are familiar with. (“The Issaquah route is 554.”) The change to 556 makes more sense because the routing is closer to the 566, with just the U-District tail chopped off.

12. I agree with the idea about adding a Seattle-Kent-Auburn express route. How does this not exist already? There must be demand with the way Kent and Auburn are growing.

    1. We’ve been asking ST and Metro for it since around 2014. They’ve consistently rejected doing it in the short to medium term, and ST has never leaned toward doing it at all. Metro put it in its long-range plan in 2016, but took it out again in the 2020s. So Federal Way and Auburn have long had all-day expresses, but Kent has only the 150 which takes over an hour most of the day.

       1. The weird thing is that ST must know there is a lot of demand for this. One of the most requested things from riders is more trips of Sounder midday. Some of those requests must come from Kent and Auburn. Obviously Sounder is faster but it is also extremely expensive. A few trips of an express bus (running when Sounder isn’t running) would make a huge difference.

          It is easy for ST to claim they don’t have the money but they are clearly leaving money on the table. Running buses every fifteen minutes from Lakewood to Federal Way *and* running express buses every half hour from Lakewood to Seattle is a huge waste. Just have the bus from Lakewood to Seattle stop at Federal Way and you save a lot of money. This can go into running an Auburn/Kent/Seattle express.

    2. I think this will eventually progress accordingly as WSDOT figures out the roadmap to implement SR 167 Master Plan. SR 167 Master Plan was done four years ago, with SR 167 toll upgrade being rolling out soon, a implementation plan will be made for those projects included in SR 167 Master Plan. That will clarify the timeline of when SR 167 will be widen with 2-lane ETL and ETL direct access will be added. Nowadays for a controversial highway projects like that, there must be a transit element to it.
       It is likely a STRIDE-style freeway express transit service will be planned with that project, but this path might take a decade.

       For the short-term, maybe they can just send 578 to SR 167?

13. I support the general approach that they’ve taken. It is quite sensible to focus on time savings. Sometimes it is worth it to truncate (or detour) sometimes it isn’t. Overall I would say the proposal isn’t bad but it seems to lack creativity. There are no new routes. There is a also a lot of duplication — not just of buses and Link but buses and buses. Someone in Federal Way, waiting for their express bus to Seattle will be able to see the 574 sailing by and wonder why it doesn’t bother to stop there. This lack of creativity is probably the biggest weakness. This exists for all three areas (north, south, east).

    I’ve already covered what I would like to see (more or less) to the south: I think John is right about the 545 it makes sense to send the 545 to South Lake Union before heading downtown. I also think it makes sense to run the 542 more often than the 545 (midday). I’ll add a new comment for my thoughts about the north end.

    1. I think a lot of people — myself included — are surprised that the 510 will still be around after they run a lot more trains to Lynnwood. At that point the crowding issues go away. At the very least I would expect them to truncate the buses in Lynnwood (making the 510 an express version of the 512). But I also think it isn’t a big waste of money. It is certainly a much better value than North Sounder.

       Which brings me to my first suggestion. With the ST Express 510 and Community Transit 117, the buses cover most of the North Sounder trips. The only good argument for North Sounder — the only place where it saves a substantial amount of time for riders — is Edmonds. It is hard for me to see the train being justified just for that. It is very expensive. Furthermore I could see an alternative that while not as fast could run a lot more often. I would run an express from Edmonds to 185th Station. I would run that bus every fifteen minutes. It would make all the stops along Edmonds Way that the 909 makes. The rest of the 909 is covered by the 130, which means that Community Transit would likely cancel the 909 and use the savings to run other buses more often (or add new routes). It would stop twice in King County. Once at the station and once at 185th & Aurora (to connect to the RapidRide E and 348).

       That leaves the 512. The 512 is a solid route but it is now largely redundant with the Community Transit 201/202. The 512 is an express, but just barely. Like the 201/202 it serves Ash Way Park and Ride. In my opinion, the 201/202 serves it better because it doesn’t backtrack — it is essentially “on the way”. The parking lot has southbound HOV ramps to and from I-5 but no northbound connection. Buses have to loop around. As of this writing (rush hour) it takes ten minutes for a car. Maybe it doesn’t take quite that long for a bus (there are some HOV lanes in places) but it certainly isn’t quick (like it is going south). As others have suggested, the 512 could just skip Ash Way (leaving the 201/202 to cover the trips from Ash Way to Everett). This would save a considerable amount of time for riders trying to get from Everett to Lynnwood (or Seattle). It would also save ST money.

       The 512 also doesn’t add much in Everett itself. The 201/202 runs on Broadway through Everett, covering a major corridor before going on the freeway. Except for a couple of very early southbound runs, the 512 just starts and ends at Everett Station. It doesn’t serve anything to the north. The bus could easily serve Colby via the pathway of the Everett Transit 19. Again this would allow the underfunded agency to put service into other areas. But mostly it would give people along this corridor — one of the more urban in Everett — a fast one-seat ride to Lynnwood.

       In both these cases I could see the other agency chipping in if this exceeds ST’s budget. Community Transit and Everett Transit would save money — they could give some of that savings to ST.

       1. Mukilteo to King Street Station is about 45 min on Sounder North, but about 1 1/2 hours on 117 to Link.

          Obviously, more frequency at the expense of speed could benefit a lot more people, but for the few that use Sounder N it’s going to be a hard sell to nearly double their transit time.

          I agree that Sounder North as it exists now is a waste. However, in those occasions when I’ve taken the morning Cascades train headed south, it’s been pretty busy even though it operates a couple hours after morning peak.

          It seems like making Sounder North into an additional Bellingham – Seattle train could be a good option.

       2. @Glenn in Portland, where’re you getting the 90-minute figure? The 117 takes just over half an hour from Mukilteo Station to Lynnwood Station, and then Link takes 37 minutes to International District.

          Still an increase in time, but nowhere near as much as you’re suggesting.

       3. RossB: note that Route 510 is one-way peak-only; it inherently has costly deadheads trips on the I-5 general-purpose lanes for operators and/or coaches.

    2. I look at it the other way round. Everett-Lynnwood-Seattle is regional intercity transit that’s primarily ST’s responsibility. The question is why the 201/202 still go to Lynnwood. The primary reason may be to give Marysville riders reasonable travel time to Lynnwood and Seattle. But CT is about to obliterate that having Swift Gold replace the 201/202 north of Everett. It may delete the south of Everett portion rather than spinning it off to another route.

       1. Everett-Lynnwood-Seattle is regional intercity transit that’s primarily ST’s responsibility.

          Everett-Seattle is definitely regional intercity transit but Everett-Lynnwood is entirely within Snohomish County. It is like Issaquah to Seattle. Yeah, ST can run buses between there but so can Metro. Ultimately the two agencies should cooperate. This can be done in two basic ways. One agency can defer to the other for key corridors (like Metro did when they let ST handle Bellevue-Seattle) or they can overlap but be complementary. When the 556 is running, riders from Downtown Bellevue have twice as many buses to the UW.

          The latter approach makes more sense for Lynnwood-Everett. The 201/202 is the superior route. It does a much better job of serving Ash Way and has a better tail to the north. But if the 512 skipped Ash Way it would complement it. Riders would get faster service between Everett and Lynnwood, making the ST Express bus more of an express. Extending the 512 further into Everett would add value for riders while not hurting existing ones (it is not like the detour to Ash Way).

       2. @Mike Orr: Yes, but the new 905 is also all-day, and is being positioned as the new way to get between Smokey Point and Lynnwood the fastest.

       3. “Everett-Seattle is definitely regional intercity transit but Everett-Lynnwood is entirely within Snohomish County. It is like Issaquah to Seattle. Yeah, ST can run buses between there but so can Metro.”

          And Issaquah’s primary all-day regional service is ST, and Metro supplements it. The same with Federal Way-Seattle and Redmond-Seattle. That’s what Sound Transit is for and why it was invented.

    3. A SR-520 bus serving SLU would still be stuck on I-5 congestion. Feed Link. SLU has tons of service. Frequent-to-frequent transfers are available.

       1. They are adding a reversible transit /hov lane for the i5 segment

       2. WSDOT may add the reversible lane; it is delayed; it will only get the buses out of congestion in one direction. It is not available today. Cost-effective service is two-way. The WSDOT SR-520 project has major fiscal issues.

    4. Anecdotally, SDOT once interfered Expedia’s plan to run an employee shuttle from Interbay to Redmond citing that its employees can take 545 and it was clearly pushed back. I agree that it is not very ideal for someone to commute from Redmond to Interbay by bus because the transfer points are all too south.

       Area surrounding to Lake Union does have a problem getting to eastside via SR 520. There are multiple tech companies running employee shuttles between SLU and eastside, but there is not a proper public transit route covering that. Soon 545’s direct connection between Redmond and Downtown Downtown Seattle will not be as important as it is now and for now ST doesn’t want to delete it yet. I see this as an opportunity to modify 545 to serve area like SLU.

14. Everett-and southern Everett in particular-continues to get short-changed by Sound Transit planners. While folks in Bellevue, south King County, and Pierce County have enjoyed bi-directional, all-day, and Sea-Tac service and on street stops for decades, Everett hasn’t. Everett’s all-day service is one, the 512, and it’s only along the I-5 spine. The other routes are all peak-only: Seattle-bound 510 and 513, and the Bellevue-bound 532. The only stops in southern Everett are at E. Casino Rd/Evergreen Way and at the Eastmont P&R, where the 513 is the only bus that goes there. There’s zero ST express bus service to Sea-Tac or even to the region’s secondary airport, Seattle/Paine Field International. There are no plans to have the Link extension stop there, either.
    ST planners rejected my suggestion to route the 513 by the well-utilized South Everett freeway station. They said that it would “inconvenience their riders.” A year or two later, they had no problems adding I-5 diversions to stops at Ash Way P&R and at Lynnwood TC. Now, they are eliminating Eastmont P&R to have perhaps a direct route to Boeing, perhaps eliminating remaining south Everett stop at E Casino/Evergreen Way stop. We all know that serving Boeing is the main reason the county executive has been adamant about spending $1 billion or more and five or more years of extra time to dogleg Link that way, which is probably why ST express bus service going to there has been zero. This may change with this service change, but ST planners have proposed and pulled it multiple times, just as with the north side of the Ash Way direct access ramp.
    Last week, I observed as a dozen people alighted from a 513 at Evergreen Way. After that bus pulled away to go nonstop to Seaway Transit Center by Boeing, an afternoon destination for virtually if anybody (many just continue straight towards their base, while I’ve witnessed many empty 513s going to and from Seaway), an Everett Transit 12 arrived and scooped up the dozen or so people from the 513. They all exited within the next half a mile, as Sound Transit planners never consider low-income multifamily residents of south Everett worthy of more than one stop. Inconveniencing their riders is no problem for Sound Transit planners in this case.
    Other things on this service change. Eliminating the 550 will remove all of Bellevue’s plethora of streetside stops they’ve enjoyed having for decades, something south Everett hasn’t had equal treatment for. With the 577 and 578, I agree, truncating them to make trips longer is something ST planners did to Snohomish County riders. Lynnwood TC has one of the longer walks between bus and train. However, ST planners should have one of those two routes use the Seattle busway vs. duplicating the other route in order to serve different riders. The 578 would seem to be the obvious choice for this.

15. I will provide extensive comments to ST. Their proposal is weak. The network should integrate with Link and use the Sound Move and WSDOT freeway infrastructure well. ST may have to make up for the weak Metro East Link Connections network.

    Broad strokes
    South. Consolidate routes 574 and 594; it should serve the FW Link station; use the South 317th Street ramp in both directions. Skip SODO; Link serves that. Use the downtown Seattle pathway of routes 577 and 578; that would make up the minutes to deviate to Federal Way station. Route 590 could skip both FW and SODO for even better speed. Routes 577 and 578 could be truncated at FW.

    East. Consolidate routes 542 and 545; one very frequent route between Bear Creek and U District via Redmond Link and SR-520. This could have been done any time after U Link. It is silly to have Route 545 buses sit in congestion on the I-5 general purpose lanes and 4th and 5th avenues in downtown Seattle. In the I-90 corridor, east-west markets should meet Link at Mercer Island; north-south markets could meet Link at either BTC or South Bellevue but beware of congestion. The NE 6th Street center access ramp is great. So, delete the ELC Route 554. Instead, implement routes 552 and 554 oriented to Mercer Island from the Eastgate local bays and Issaquah TC, respectively. They could live loop at MI. The Eastgate local bays will have routes 220, 223, 226, 240, and 245 and only slow options to South Bellevue. There is a wide seam between the Eastgate freeway station and the local bays, about 800 feet and four levels. Route 555 could connect Issaquah Highlands and BTC via Issaquah TC, and Eastgate via Richards Road. (This pathway was used in about 2011; Metro has taken Route 240 from it). Ask Metro to shift Route 240 to Bellevue Way from 112th Avenue SE/NE. Just because Bellevue Way NE/SE had a blue ST bus for 20-some years does not mean it needs one post Link. The ELC Route 554 provides slow service to Issaquah. The freeway infrastructure is set up for a connection at Mercer Island.

    NE. Route 522 should have 10-minute headway at all periods.

    Link should be frequent in all periods. ST3 capital will be delayed. This is not the time to be cheap about service frequency.

    1. The whole point of SODO is to skip I-5 traffic and transfer to Link.

       It would be actually pretty efficient if it is upgraded to be an actual busway with an HOV entrance and signal priority.

       I would rather see them make these upgrades as it’s highly essential for South King transit.

       1. where should the transfers with Link be: Federal Way, SODO, or Westlake?

       2. SODO is the easiest one. The bus stop has any easy access point to the platforms. You can transfer in under a minute and head north on Link. I use this a lot.

          From the other direction, I get off Link at Stadium and get the bus from the nearby stop. SODO requires multiple crossings and the bus stop is a bit further south from the train.

          My only issue is some of the bus schedules give 0-1 mins to transfer, when they should give 3-4 minutes. Link can run late and we need time to cross to the bus stop. On the 102, the first two afternoon runs to Fairwood leaves exactly when Link arrives and I have missed it, so I have to take a train 10 mins earlier and waste time waiting at the bus stop. And if the bus is late it’s even worse… Sometimes 15-20 mins late.

       3. I have complained to Metro about this and they didn’t respond or fix the schedules.

       4. All bus routes everywhere without exclusive ROW have significant variation in arrival times at transfer points. Best to rely on frequent-to-frequent transfers.

    2. Not everyone is going to Seattle. If we keep designing buses with one destination in mind, you’re losing a plethora of riders.

       SODO/Stadium/Intl District are very important junction stations to get around the region, for everyday commuters and visitors alike.

       From SODO, you can head north to Capitol Hill/U District and beyond. From Stadium, you can head south on any of these buses easily after transferring from Link. From Chinatown, you can transfer to the 2 Line, Sounder, etc.

       It’d be great if the same level of consideration of transfers were made on the opposite terminus of these express bus routes as well. Unfortunately they’re not, making multi route travel an enormous pain when it doesn’t have to be. The concept of a schedule doesn’t matter anymore to Metro or ST.

       1. If the buses stop by Federal Way then Federal Way is the main transfer point. The 577/578 pathway through downtown would connect to other Link stations (like CID) if you would rather transfer later.

          That being said, you lose other connections. Or they become big delays. I think we should double-down on the SoDo busway (with ramps and signal priority as you mentioned) rather than skip it.

16. “Skip SODO; Link serves that.”

    Wasn’t the SODO busway created to get buses out of I-5 congestion? Yet you’re putting them back into it, and ignoring one of the two bits of transit-exclusive lanes we have.

    1. Yes, when we had a bus based system. It was the UPRR pathway. Thanks for the comments; I will consider. The pathway of routes 577 and 578 connects with Link at Westlake. If ST3 Link continues, will the buses be kicked off? ST3 Link will be delayed. Routes 101 and 150 remain.
       Note that ST and Metro have had two I-5 south end pathways for decades. There appears to a be a six minute difference between the p.m. peak scheduled times between Pike Street and Federal Way.

    2. I’ve been on southbound 577s/578s that waited minutes to get on the freeway at the downtown entrance. The SODO busway bypasses that and the bottleneck between downtown and Spokane Street.

       If/when ST3 Link displaces the SODO busway, Metro is thinking of moving the buses to 4th Ave S. This would be slower, but there is an SDOT project to renovate 4th Ave S to give it transit-priority lanes and add the missing sidewalks. The two RapidRide 150 alternatives are 4th Ave S or truncating at Rainier Beach. If the downtown alternative is chosen, the 4th Ave S street project might coincide with it if not built earlier.

    3. I really think ST3 has it backwards. We should embrace the SoDo Busway not get rid of it. Imagine this:

       1) Bus-only ramps from the Spokane Street Viaduct to the SoDo Busway.
       2) Bus-only ramps from the HOV lanes of I-5 to the SoDo Busway.

       This means the buses get to downtown faster (and more reliably). But it also improves connectivity. It would mean that lots of buses would connect to Link at SoDo. They would also connect to each other there. West Seattle to UW, Renton to High Point. A lot of trips become much easier. But wait, there is more:

       There are limits to how many buses the SoDo Busway (and related corridor) can handle but that shouldn’t be that hard to manage. It is also, generally speaking, a good thing. If buses are running every minute through there then truncating a bus there (or sending it somewhere else) is a minor penalty. It is also worth noting that most of the the same issues that effect the busway effect Link. Imagine we build another bridge over Lander — this one over the busway and Link tracks. Now the trains and buses have one less intersection to worry about.

       But imagine we take it a step further:

       3) Freeway transit station at Boeing Access Road with pedestrian walkway to Link Station.

       Now the south end is connected to Rainier Valley (and Beacon Hill) like never before. Tacoma, Kent, Auburn to Rainier Valley is much faster (especially if we add more express buses to downtown). Renton to Rainier Valley has more options. There would be a lot less backtracking or slogging on slow buses.

17. The survey didn’t allow me to give written feedback . I’m disappointed. You can only give so much feedback with the multiple choice selections.

    1. In the past all surveys had a text box for freeform answers. In the past few years some of ST’s surveys haven’t had them. This is such a major survey it’s important to have a place for other alternatives or to express an opinion not in the choices. The only thing to do is to email them to ST, or fill in a comment form at an open house if there is one. But the lack of a text box means a lot of people won’t think of the possibility of other alternatives, or will get so frustrated at being unable to express them that they don’t. That could significantly depress the number of people who advocate for; e.g., a Federal Way stop on the 594. ST could interpret that as “Only one or two people want it” rather than “Many people want it but there was no text box to say so”.

       The negatively-minded will doubtless say this is intentional to minimize feedback advocating other alternatives, so that ST can say there’s little support for them. That’s annoying and frustrating. The only thing to do is to send lots of feedback another way, and encourage other people too. And one of the most important things to include in it is, “Future surveys need a freeform text box for other comments.”

    2. I felt the same.
       I responded moderately to those multiple choices (because that was my real reaction to the change I had thoughts about), but I planned to leave a feedback to voice my concern more specifically. I discovered that there wasn’t such option. So I started over and changed one of the answer to “strongly disagree”.

    3. for written comments try this: servicechanges@soundtransit.org

18. Metro needs to run the full route 372 on weekends. ( Or maybe consider termination at NE 145th St if they must).

    1. Metro is going to rename the 372 to just the 72 and send it to 148th Station when ST sends the 522 to 148th Station. I expect the 72 to run like a normal bus (and not have a weekend truncation).

       1. I thought ST was bumping the 522 up to 10 minute frequency? Or is that only when the 522 gets converted into the S3?

          If the 522 remains at every 15 minutes, that means that bus service on Bothell Way will be cut in half when the 372 is rerouted to 148th. Even worse than I feared.

       2. Stride will run every ten minutes *during peak*. I don’t think there are any promises for midday frequency although I would expect them to run it every fifteen minutes.

          If the 522 remains at every 15 minutes, that means that bus service on Bothell Way will be cut in half when the 372 is rerouted to 148th. Even worse than I feared.

          The most cost effective sections of the existing bus are in Seattle and those are going away. The bus is a lot more peak oriented. During peak I think it might run every ten minutes, maybe more if there is crowding. But *midday* I would expect it to run every 15 minutes.

       3. ST has promised at least 15-minute daytime service for the Stride lines. I’ve been following that closely, since 20-30 minute service would defeat many of the advantages of BRT and reasons for it.

19. When classes are in session rhe 372 gets very crowded from uds to 25th NE . I’d expect the same out of the new 72 during classes. It will be the only service on 25th. I don’t know how link to link service generally performs. I wonder when 2 line across the lake will pass rhe current 550 ridersGod. i get rhe reasoning but rrhe 550 was was such a core part of sound transi tuntil we started giving up lots of services in the name of the link god.

    1. “I wonder when 2 line across the lake will pass rhe current 550 ridersGod.”

       Immediately. It will run every 8-10 minutes all day, so less waiting. It will be especially welcome Sundays and evenings when the 550 is 30 minutes. I minimize going to Bellevue on Sundays because of that; with Link, I won’t have to.

       It will be immune to traffic congestion that adds 15+ minutes to a 550 trip. Traffic is bad in the PM peak and late afternoon, and whenever there’s a ballgame, which is almost every day in summer. It will be faster because it won’t have to navigate local streets or stoplights with 30-35 mph speed limits.

       It will be a one-seat ride to the Spring District, Redmond Tech, downtown Redmond, Capitol Hill, U-District, north Seattle, and Shoreline/Lynnwood. Not just from Bellevue TC or two Redmond stops, but from all Link stations/neighborhoods.

       It will attract riders who disappeared when the Rainier freeway stop was closed (and is still closed), when it was kicked out of DSTT, and when the South Bellevue P&R was closed for construction, when the Mercer Island P&R was reduced for construction (I think), and when it lost peak frequency. The P&Rs are open again now but some riders may not have come back to the 550, but they might try the full 2 Line as a new improved thing.

20. One minor thing that remains and still surprises me: the 566 still goes to Redmond. It only serves one stop in Redmond — right next to Redmond Tech Station. This means it completely duplicates Link for that section. Does the bus “offer substantial travel time benefits over Link”? No! At best the bus is just as fast as the train — quite often it is slower. This might save a handful of riders a transfer but otherwise is a waste of service.

    Again, this is a minor thing. It only runs there a couple dozen times a day. If it ended in Downtown Bellevue it would save somewhere around fifteen minute per trip. But that sort of thing adds up. It again shows a lack of creativity when it comes to these plans. That isn’t enough to pay for express service from Auburn and Kent to Seattle but it gets us part of the way there. You could probably pay for the rest of it by having the 594 stop at Federal Way while you truncate the 578 at Federal Way. ST has focused only on which buses are worth ending or truncating instead of using this as an opportunity to provide a much better network.

    1. It may not be minor if it indicates a thought pattern. Route 566 duplicates Link between BTC and RTS. It duplicates Sounder between Aurburn and Tukwila; it could start at Tukwila and be timed with Sounder trips. Sounder and Link are both fast and reliable; Sounder and the 2 Line will have plenty of capacity.

       1. People don’t want to pay $5 for Sounder.

       2. It doesn’t serve Tukwila, it serves Renton instead. So it goes Auburn, Kent, Renton, Bellevue, Redmond. It is designed to connect to Sounder but I don’t know how well it is timed. Southbound it would be challenging to time it since going through Renton creates a lot of potential delay. While it runs only during peak it has longer peak service than Sounder. In other words there are several trips that occur when Sounder isn’t running.

          I think the only big flaw with the routing is the trip from Bellevue TC to Redmond.

       3. “It doesn’t serve Tukwila, it serves Renton instead.”

          It doesn’t serve either one; it’s in the middle of nowhere right on the border.

       4. Doesn’t the 566 serve Renton? According to the schedule (https://www.soundtransit.org/ride-with-us/routes-schedules/566) it stops at:

          Rainier Avenue & South 7th Street
          Renton Transit Center
          Park Avenue North and North 6th Street
          Park Avenue North and North 8th Street
          Southport Drive North& Lake Washington Boulevard

          All of those are in Renton (I think).

       5. I was talking about Sounder. It’s Sounder that doesn’t really serve Renton.

       6. OK, but that is different. Jack wrote:

          Route 566 duplicates Link between BTC and RTS. It duplicates Sounder between Auburn and Tukwila;

          The first half is true. The second half is not. The 566 only duplicates Sounder between Auburn and Kent. The duplication is really a minor issue. It only occurs when Sounder is running and only for a small part of the route. In contrast the overlap between East Link and the 566 is constant. It is a waste of money. Truncate the 566 at Bellevue Transit Center.

       7. True, Route 566 does not serve Tukwila today. If it did and did not serve Auburn and Kent and also was truncated at BTC, it would integrate with both Sounder and Link.
          RossB pointed out that the Sounder peak service ends an hour before Route 566 does. Route 566 devolved into a one-way peak-only service.
          The southbound connection would be less reliable due to I-405 issues.
          Ugh.

21. Hoping the 372 will continue to begin in the U District and run to and from Bothell on weekdays. But, there’s this stretch between 130th and Lake City Way and 145th and Bothell Way – – how will one navigate that stretch on /holidays/?- the 372 does not run past 130th and Lake City Way on holidays.

    1. The 372 is a really slow trip if you want a Bothell to UW bus. They’d be better off with the transfer to Link.

       1. I think the ideal would be an express that went on the freeway (and stopped at the freeway stations). So UW, Totem Lake, UW-Bothell. That would be a fast bus that could probably justify 15 minute service.

       2. That would be a solid idea.

    2. Hoping the 372 will continue to begin in the U District and run to and from Bothell on weekdays.

       It is highly unlikely that will happen. Metro plans on sending the 372 to 148th station (and renaming it as the 72). Those plans could change but I don’t see them doing that. The northern part of the 372 doesn’t do as well as the southern part. Even on weekdays (when every bus goes to Bothell) the vast majority of riders never leave Seattle. You could make a strong case for changing the route now.

       It is unfortunate that the future 522 (and Stride) take the sudden turn to 148th Station (instead of continuing to Roosevelt and/or the U-District) but Metro is using this as an excuse to focus service on more productive sections (while still retaining coverage). For what its worth I took the 372 just yesterday out to Kenmore and it is a great bus. But that part of it is just not worth it (especially when the 522 runs more often).

22. Thanks to the people who responded to my earlier question.
    I have another question: Does this re-routing mean that no bus (Metro or Sound Transit) will go by Lake Forest Park? At present, the 372 and 522 stop right across from this shopping center.

    1. The 522 will continue to serve Lake Forest Park (using the same bus stops). The future Stride 3 will have most of the same stops (https://www.soundtransit.org/system-expansion/stride-s3-line). The 331 will remain the same.

    2. Both the 522 and future Stride 3 exist primarily to connect Woodinville, Bothell, Kenmore, and Lake Forest Park to a transfer to downtown Seattle, and their areas are the ones funding it. So Lake Forest Park will never be dropped.

       The 372’s primary purpose seems to be 25th Ave NE. Currently it also connects the two UW campuses and provides extra service between Kenmore and north Seattle. That will change with the restructure, with the 522/Stride having sole responsibility north of 145th, and the 72 having sole responsibility south of 145th.

       How close are the transfer stops between the two at 145th & Lake City Way? At minimum you’ll have to cross the street. Will you also have to walk a block or two further from the corner?

       1. The new 522 won’t stop at all at 145th/LCW. The 72 will only stop southbound. The transfer stop will be at 145th/30th. Transferring riders will have to ride through the 145th/LCW intersection multiple times.

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