Denny Way Mode Share

87 Replies to “Denny Way Mode Share”

1. Your ridership estimate for Route 8 is wrong. According to STB’s “Ridership Patterns for King County Metro Route 8”, there were on average about 42 people per bus crossing I-5 eastbound in the PM peak. Since Route 8 runs every 12 minutes then, that makes 210 people, not 321. Did you forget to account for people making trips entirely contained west of I-5, maybe?

   Looking at the data, the ridership is also asymmetrical: westbound peak only has about 20-26 people per bus across I-5.

   And lastly, your bolded conclusion that Route 8 has more riders than both southbound I-5 and overpass drivers is pretty misleading: we are talking about traffic volumes along Denny Way itself, so those car numbers should be added together. With the updated numbers, bus riders along Denny are about 1/3 of drivers during PM peak, right?

   I fully support improving the 8, but this analysis feels a bit cherry picked, honestly. And it would’ve been good to point out that the intersection in question already has a bus lane. I don’t that affects the analysis much, but seems like important context.

   1. Thank you. I’d also point out that the 8 gets a non-trivial number of transfers from Link and maybe even the 60 at Broadway. Riders boarding “east of I-5” are not some trivial rump as shown in the article’s included chart. It is in fact the second highest stop for eastbound boardings of any.

      Your focus on the segment data is telling. Well done.

      Another slipperiness in the article is the bald assumption that any foot that touches the southeast corner of the Denny Way and Stewart Street intersection is headed eastward over I-5. There are two large apartment buildings on Court Place just south of Denny Way which are probably the source or destination of some — even perhaps a significant portion — of those feet. A close inspection of the intersection shows clearly that there is a sidewalk along “at grade” Denny Way past the beginning of the viaduct.

      1. It is the second-highest ridership stop, but if you add up all ridership west of I-5 it’s 4x that east of I-5. Regardless, as I stated in the article, riders to the east would still stand to benefit greatly from a bus lane. The traffic on Denny Way means riders boarding at Capitol Hill station currently have no idea when their bus will arrive and may have extended waits due to bunching. If you are trying to transfer onto the Link as you state, this unreliability makes timing that transfer based on schedules impossible. A bus lane would resolve these issues and give riders high confidence of when their bus will arrive.

         I don’t know where you get the idea that I assume all pedestrians at the SE corner are headed east across the overpass. In the article I explicitly state we assume 50% and that is reflected in the graph too. We counted all pedestrians at that corner between 5 PM and 5:30 PM on a Tuesday and found that 60% of pedestrians continued east across the bridge, but we used 50% to be safe.

         We included the “no sidewalk” text to highlight that only pedestrians from the SE corner can go over the bridge to make it more clear. The fact that there is a sidewalk on the at grade section of Denny doesn’t change anything about the analysis.

      2. Yes, you divided the total number of people by two, and I should have said it more clearly. But roughly half the people who touch that corner and who also touch the corner at the other end of the viaduct at Melrose over a day did so other corner first. That is, they came across the viaduct westbound.

         Of course it’s true that from 5:00 – 6:00 PM on iDAX’s counting date the majority would have been headed east. But that “+” sign is pretty shaky, especially with the access to the Court Place apartments from the eastbound bus stop just west of Stewart.

         And how many people who walk over it are headed to the apartments just across the freeway along Melrose, both to the north and south? Surely that is a popular place to live for Amazon employees who work in the skycrapers on Minor. Would they have driven or taken the bus? Probably not.

         The point is that you can’t assume that everyone who walks would take the bus if it had reserved lanes west of there.

      3. The point is that you can’t assume that everyone who walks would take the bus if it had reserved lanes west of there.

         Sure, but so what? At most it changes the numbers a little bit. That really doesn’t matter. Look at the closing paragraph:

         In summary, bus lanes would not result in meaningful delay for I-5 drivers. The drivers primarily impacted would be those headed east across the Denny overpass. However, they are the ones who could most easily take advantage of that shiny new bus lane and leave their car at home to enjoy a faster commute than they have today.

         That is true either way. Are there more people driving across the Denny overpass than taking the bus? Yes, but just barely. The numbers are shockingly similar. Throw in a handful of pedestrians who have given up on the 8 (but would like to take it otherwise) and you have more riders than drivers. This is true despite the slow speeds and poor frequency. We know for a fact that if speed increases, ridership increases. The same thing is true with frequency. Thus if you add bus lanes and somehow magically didn’t impact the number of people driving over I-5 it is quite likely that way more people would benefit. That is the point.

         Keep in mind, this isn’t true everywhere. There are bound to be plenty of places where we have to take a leap of faith. There are places where the number of people driving greatly outnumbers those taking transit. In those cases we have to hope that a lot of people switch. Or we just ask the majority to sacrifice for the good of those taking transit. It is like asking them to slow down — yes, it takes longer, but you save lives. But this isn’t one of those cases. A majority of people using the corridor would benefit if they added bus lanes.

   2. The benefits of a bus lane extend to west side, east side, and interside trips of I5, so I’m not sure the specific focus on ridership directly over the overpass is the most relevant metric. Obviously, that’s the route the author took and their assumptions based on the data they used are fine. Maybe it’s more like 200 to 250 people on the slower than walking #8 on average from 3PM to 7PM. It’s still obvious that number would be higher between 5PM and 6PM.

      And I think 341 cars is probably the relevant point of comparison – that’s drivers using Denny Way and continuing on to Capitol Hill. Maybe some of the other cars use alternate routes specifically to avoid Denny west of the overpass, but I would say that more bus riders or roughly equal bus riders is a fair conclusion to make for Denny area to Capitol Hill trips from 5 to 6. One third is far too low.

      And of course, who could forget about the bus lane that’s one block long and is continually blocked by I5 bound traffic?

      1. The benefits of a bus lane extend to west side, east side, and interside trips of I5, so I’m not sure the specific focus on ridership directly over the overpass is the most relevant metric.

         Exactly.

   3. The main message of the article is that more people would benefit from bus lanes on Denny Way than would be delayed by one. Anyone that rides Route 8 along or east of Denny Way would still benefit, with those east finally getting reliable arrival times that would match the schedule versus the current buses which are regularly delayed by over 30 minutes. Since Denny Way is so close to the start of the route, this is practically all eastbound Route 8 riders.

      Therefore, the article always compares total eastbound Route 8 ridership and not solely that going over the bridge. This may seem unfair, but again, I am comparing all the people who would benefit from a bus lane to all the people who would be delayed by one.

      Ridership has increased a lot since the 2023 numbers used in the analysis you are referencing and I want to emphasize that we are comparing drivers between 5 PM and 6 PM with an average of bus riders between 3 PM and 7 PM. Regular riders of Route 8 also know that there are FAR more than 42 people on their bus between 5 PM and 6 PM, with most buses being standing-room-only. Normally, there’s at least 30 people waiting to board at the Denny and Westlake stop during that hour and it’s fairly common to see several of those riders left behind as the bus reaches capacity at that stop.

      For my bolded claim, it is admittedly cherry-picked to compare the number of drivers separately, but I wanted to highlight those facts. I’ve seen comments on other posts claiming that I-5 S drivers outnumber ALL people headed east on Denny Way and that Route 8 riders are only a pitiful fraction of all people travelling east on Denny. I wanted to dispel those misbeliefs by showing just how wrong those assumptions are.

      I didn’t mention the bus lane because it’s too short to meaningfully improve Route 8’s issues. Race the L8 showed. that the bus is still slower than jumping rope from Dexter even though 20% of that length is covered by the bus lane and the bus was able to travel unimpeded in that section.

      This brings me to the last point I want to emphasize: These numbers are all for a bus that is currently slower than jumping rope. If demand is already so high in this dilapidated state, then imagine just how high it’ll be if it were actually fast and reliable.

   4. Your analysis of his analysis is wrong. It doesn’t matter how many people rode the bus across I-5 (or any other section). What matters is how many people rode the bus. Every rider is impacted by the very slow and unreliable nature of the 8.

      In contrast, it does matter where the drivers are headed. If you are headed to I-5, it really doesn’t make any difference what happens on Denny. Either way you are basically waiting for I-5 to clear out (not Denny). But if you are waiting to drive your car over the freeway, going from two lanes to one would be worse. However, you are outnumbered by those who want to take the bus.

   5. > Did you forget to account for people making trips entirely contained west of I-5, maybe?

      I think the point wasn’t to find a perfect apples-to-apples comparison of people movement through this intersection, but to just to confirm the magnitude of benefit associated with transit priority. You could get deep into the statistical weeds trying to estimate the actual number of transit riders passing through the intersection during “rush hour” (reportedly 5-6pm on weekdays), but you’d still end up with an estimate.

      … since I already went through those statistical weeds in discussion with the author, I might as well reproduce it here:

      It appears SDOT (in the traffic study referred to in this article) used KCM’s stop-level boarding data from the spring 2024 service change, which spans March 30, 2024, to September 14, 2024. STB has this data, too, and it shows that during weekday evenings (3pm to 7pm), the average eastbound Route 8 bus had a maximum passenger load of 44.9 riders departing the stop at Denny & Stewart, dead center of the triangle of intersections discussed in the article. Metro runs 5 buses an hour during this 4-hour period, so that’s 20 buses with 44.9 people each totaling 898 eastbound riders between 3pm and 7pm. However, SDOT’s data is focused on the 5-6pm period, which is “rush hour” for cars, pedestrians, and transit riders. Hourly ridership data for Route 8 doesn’t exist, but we can assume the peak ridership is exceeds the average of ~225 riders per hour. Metro’s 60-foot articulated buses max out around 120 passengers, which at 5 buses an hour can move a maximum of about 600 riders per hour. Therefore, the true number of eastbound Route 8 transit riders in the 5-6pm rush hour is likely somewhere between 225 and 600 riders. Since Route 8 is often standing-room only at rush hour, I think the real count is somewhere around 300-400 riders, which matches the “321+” assumed in the article.

      So, I leave this to you: would the article’s conclusion have been better supported by including this whole math exercise, or does use of the simple (but less robust) number do the job? The thesis of the article assumes there are more transit riders than SOV drivers in its call for transit priority, but even if the truth is that there are slightly more SOV drivers than bus riders, does that weaken the cause?

   6. Boldfacing two sentences was my choice as editor, but the wording was Jason’s. So if you think they weren’t significant enough to be boldfaced, it was my fault, whereas if you disagree with the facts or conclusions it’s Jason’s.

      To me the point of the article is in the title, “Mode Share”. The point was to show the relative number of drivers vs non-drivers, because that has been little studied or mentioned in the news, and many assertions are plain wrong (that 80+% of travelers are drivers). So that at least was my reason for accepting the article idea and publishing it.

      It was impossible to find complete apples-to-apples comparisons because the different mode measurements used different street segments or lengths or time spans. So we got as close as we could, and Jason’s numbers in the comparison chart are the minimum we could definitely quantify, and the “+” indicates that we believe the actual number is higher, and would be even more higher with the bus lanes. I believe an approximate comparison is better than no comparison, and at least it opens up the mode-share issue to greater scrutiny and consideration after it has been underreported for so long.

2. Another factor to consider in arguing for bus lanes on Denny is that traffic congestion experienced by a bus delays not just passengers riding through the actual traffic, but everybody, up and down the entire route, via bus bunching and unpredictable and less frequent arrival times. Furthermore, as this phenomenon exists *only* to people to ride the bus, it can serve as a powerful inducement to drive during periods when traffic is at its worst. It gets even worse when the buses become so delayed that they overrun their scheduled layover period, thus causing traffic snarls in one direction to impact all bus trips going the opposite direction.

   So, the number of people that would benefit from improved bus lanes on Denny is even greater than the number of people riding the 8 across the Denny/I-5 overpass. You also have to include anybody who rides any stretch of the 8, including trips like Capitol Hill to MLK that don’t cross I-5 at all.

   1. Yes, ridership would definitely go up if it was faster and more frequent (which go together). But the fact that people haven’t just given up entirely on the 8 (despite the slow speeds) is striking.

   2. And the cost of driver hours to sit in congestion, and the inefficiency of having those hours sit rather than running the buses more frequently. So the city and county have a financial reason to install the bus lanes too.

   3. “the fact that people haven’t just given up entirely on the 8 (despite the slow speeds) is striking.”

      It beats walking up the hill. I take it eastbound from Westlake to Melrose Ave, Broadway, or 15th for that reason, and mostly eastbound. I don’t ride it regularly but I do when I come from Whole Foods or am in that area for another reason.

3. route 8 is the reason I stopped using the bus and started biking everywhere instead. rain or shine, I’d rather get to where I want to go on a predictable schedule rather than be stuck in traffic. I hardly ever have to wait more than a few seconds a day in traffic on a bike.

   because I switched to biking, I am not represented in the data here. nevertheless, I still support bus lanes on Denny Way for everyone who is unable to switch to biking for any reason. and if they bus lanes go in, I might start using the bus again

4. If we really want to encourage a mode share from cars to buses, the #8 also needs to run more frequently in the evenings. Frequency every 20-30 minutes at times when evening Seattle enter events typically let out is not great, and can sometimes serve as an inducement for people to sit in peak traffic in their car going to the event to avoid a long wait a the bus stop for the trip back.

   One issue with doing that is that heavy ridership section (Seattle Center to Capitol Hill) is yolked together with the MLK section, which generates much lower ridership levels, so it’s impossible for Metro to boost frequency on the former, without also boosting frequency on the latter. If the 8 were split at Madison Valley, perhaps it could run more often, although the people along MLK would hate it because they would end up with significantly *worse* service, to match actual ridership levels there.

   1. If we ran it faster we could run it more often (evening and weekdays).

   2. It’s not impossible. The 8 used to terminate at Kaiser Permanente. Short runs could still do that if Metro wanted.

5. The analysis I’d like to see, which can’t be done with APC boarding data (probably have to be a survey), is to see the effects of splitting the 8: estimate how many people are riding the 8 solely within the segments (a) from east of CHS to the south terminus and (b) from the turn at MLK & Madison to the western terminus.

   A split (with overlapping segments on eastern Capitol Hill/Madison Valley) would be expensive in service hours, but honestly seems more plausible than taking a lane on Denny. I just have a hard time seeing how compliance would ever work with a curb lane, and I don’t see where you’d put in any island platforms.

   1. My assumption is that, if the 8 were split, that the cost of the split would be borne by running the MLK section of the route less often, since that’s the section with fewer people. My guess is that the MLK section would still operate every 15 minutes Monday-Friday daytime, but be cut back to every 30 minutes evenings/weekends and not run as late in the evening as the #8 does currently.

      Of course, the people along MLK would be staunchly opposed to such as move, as they would see worse service and not get any of the benefit of the other section being more frequent and/or reliable. That, in a nutshell, is why getting a splitting of the 8 through the county council is going to be difficult.

   2. We could split the 8 by having it take the 11’s path to Madison Park (like what Ross proposed back in 2022), meanwhile the path from Mount Baker to Madison Valley would be a new 108, running between the G Line’s eastern terminus to Renton TC, it would run MLK on one shot with some peak trips continuing to Fairwood via the 102’s path. With the 106 being truncated at Rainier Beach Station. Here’s my proposal:

      8: Madison Park to Seattle Center (with bus lanes)
      106: Rainier Beach to Renton
      108: Madison Valley to Renton/Fairwood

      The routes that are deleted are…
      11: Madison Park to Downtown Seattle
      101: Downtown Seattle to Renton
      102: Downtown Seattle to Fairwood

      With this restructure, you can clear up A LOT of storage, reinvesting into new efficient routes.

      1. I think combining the 11 with the 8 makes a lot of sense – especially since downtown bound 11 riders can easily transfer to the G (it’s probably faster to do that now anyways).

         But I struggle to see how cancelling the 101 makes any sense at all. It’s 15 to 20 minutes faster from Renton TC to downtown Seattle on the 101 as opposed to the 106/Link. And it’s not like the 101 is an unproductive albatross – it’s middle of the pack for efficiency system wide, which I think is pretty good for an express route. And I’m not entirely sure what the purpose of a northern MLK route south of Mount Baker would be other than to give a one seat ride. As of now, someone coming on Link/106 going to Madison Valley can transfer to the 8 or 48 (or even go downtown for the G if they really want). That’s not nothing, but I don’t think its worth cancelling the 101 over.

      2. “downtown bound 11 riders can easily transfer to the G”

         But riders from 17th to Pike-Pine can’t, because the G doesn’t go there. The further west you go, the wider the distance between Pine Street and Madison Street, so it becomes a bigger issue.

      3. Metro will never delete the 101. It has made that repeatedly clear since the early 2010s. It’s one of only six number 000-399 routes that are unchanged in Metro Connects 2050. It’s the regional route between Renton and downtown Seattle. Link is too far west and slow for a transfer at Rainier Beach or TIB to be time-effective. Sound Transit has no Renton-downtown ST Express route, so Metro has to carry the entire load. Turning the 101 into a local route that peters out at Mt Baker or MLK & Madison isn’t going to fly.

      4. The two halves of the 8 could overlap between MLK and and Capitol Hill station, or the southern half could go a slightly more southerly way to Capitol Hill station to serve more of the CD/Capitol Hill/First Hill area. That would give it a nothern anchor at a Link station/large urban village/shopping area, and avoid the complaint that terminating at MLK & Madison is a route going to nowhere that doesn’t meet people’s needs.

      5. The further west you go, the wider the distance between Pine Street and Madison Street, so it becomes a bigger issue.

         It still isn’t that wide. At there widest, Pike and Madison are a little over 600 meters apart. Pine and Madison are a little under 600 meters apart. That is about perfect in terms of line spacing. (Not stop spacing, line spacing.) See the comment from David Marcus involving the math: https://humantransit.org/2010/11/san-francisco-a-rational-stop-spacing-plan.html.

         Anyway, I think blumdrew’s point is that someone on the 11 (coming from Madison Park) can easily transfer to the G if they want to take the bus towards downtown. They can also transfer to Link. Someone at 17th & Thomas would just walk over and catch the 10 if they were headed downtown.

      6. “The two halves of the 8 could overlap between MLK and and Capitol Hill station, or the southern half could go a slightly more southerly way to Capitol Hill station”

         How about this: the southern 8 goes on 12th past Seattle University, to address the longstanding request for bus service on 12th, and in recognition of the hill between 12th and Broadway.

         This would also avoid the bad idea of rerouting the 60 to 12th as some have proposed.

   3. estimate how many people are riding the 8 solely within the segments (a) from east of CHS to the south terminus and (b) from the turn at MLK & Madison to the western terminus.

      Micheal did an updated version of your stop data analysis (https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/11/19/ridership-patterns-for-king-county-metro-route-8/). We can get an rough idea of what is going on by looking at those. I have the spreadsheet so I can easily count things up. I’ll consider a bus heading south (from Uptown to Mount Baker):

      * Total Boardings: 3,532
      * Alightings before Madison & 24th: 2,535
      * Boardings starting at Madison & 24th: 285

      I believe this answers your question (b). The vast majority of people are using the bus before it makes the turn. Of those that do use the bus after the turn, the vast majority boarded before it made the turn (about 700 to 300).

      For CHS it is a more of a mix:

      * Alightings before (and including) CHS: 1580
      * Boardings after (and including) CHS: 970

      The obvious place for a branch or a reroute is at Madison. There are a number of different options. We could have a branch, with one going to Madison Park and the other doing what the 8 does right now. We could just send all the buses to Madison Park. If we did that, we would have two options: Backfill service on MLK or not. If we did backfill service there are a number of different options as well. I could see the 27 branching. Yesler should have frequent service but it is harder to justify that with the tail. Thus you could have say, fifteen minute service along Yesler from MLK to downtown along with half-hour service to Leschi and half hour service along on MLK from Yesler to Madison. Riders along MLK would get a connection to both Yesler and downtown (even if it is infrequent).

      Even though I would like to see a reroute, I think adding BAT lanes is very important. I disagree with the idea that they wouldn’t work. Compliance is a problem but that is true everywhere. That is why they put cameras on buses now.

   4. I can see how splitting Route 8 would save service hours so that the northern section could run more frequently. However, that’s not addressing the root problem being highlighted here.

      A bus that’s isn’t moving or barely moving is a huge waste of resources, even if it’s packed. Adding more buses that barely move doesn’t help. Helping to move buses faster is what helps.

   5. Metro has already been thinking about splitting the 8. Metro Connects has had a Denny-Madison route since 2016. MLK either loses service or gets attached to another route in different scenarios. We expected this was waiting for the RapidRide G restructure, but that came and went without a peep about it. I asked Metro planners afterward why it wasn’t in it, and whether that meant Metro had turned against the concept or would/might do it later. The most they said is it isn’t dead, but they couldn’t say anything about when it might be implemented or what threshold would trigger it. So that leaves us completely in the dark.

      Another factor has arisen in the past couple years, recognition of the strategic importance of Judkins Park station and a route from it to Capitol Hill (the Broadway retail core). The current 8 serves that, while the 48 and 4 don’t. So if you split the 8, you sever that connection. And the 8 doesn’t go just to Broadway & John (where you could stay on Link and also get there); it also goes to 15th and 19th and 23rd, and further to Summit and SLU.

      So Metro may be waiting to see if Judkins Park station causes a major change in ridership patterns, and if there are any unexpected changes.

      For instance, I was one of those who pushed for the 10 to be moved to Olive/John in 2016 to backfill the Olive/John-downtown connection when the 43 was reduced. Metro also expected riders on north 15th would transfer to Link since it would then go right next to Capitol Hill station. But instead what happened is many route 10 riders switched to the 11 because it still went to the 15th & Pine area. That area east of Broadway was overlooked in the restructure, and it suffered from having only an 11 that dropped to half-hourly weekends and evenings. At the same time, the hordes from north 15th transferring at Capitol Hill station didn’t appear. The RapidRide G restructure attempted to improve on this by getting more service east of Broadway (the 12). That and other experiences where restructures had unexpected results has led me to be less confident about asserting that one particular change must be done. In this case, rerouting the 8. Or the 36 in our other discussion.

      1. A route from Judkins Park Station to Broadway and John? We’re already about to get that – Link. I’m not sure what the advantage of a bus there is?

      2. It’s more for riders from Judkins Park station to other parts of the hill that aren’t right at Capitol Hill station, and for riders on MLK not near Judkins Park station going to somewhere on the hill or to Capitol Hill station. Having a route anchored at a Link station + urban village at both ends just makes it a stronger route for a myriad of overlapping trips. It’s not just for the trivial Judkins Park station to Capitol Hill station.

         The biggest issue is to avoid terminating in the middle of nowhere at MLK & Madison, with little anywhere on northern MLK to go to that meets people’s needs. That just creates a route that people don’t use because it’s practically useless if you don’t live in the stop walksheds. Going to the Capitol Hill commercial district meets those needs. A Link station is the best endpoint, and Capitol Hill station is it.

6. You have mixed the definition of drivers (actually vehicles) with bus riders (people). That’s deceptive and logically wrong.

   Either count the vehicles (buses and cars) or count the people (people riding in buses and cars). Just counting the “drivers” is just wrong and treats the auto passengers as non-existent.

   *****

   You are also only counting the through movement in the 341 or 321 claim. That’s also deceptive and logically wrong.

   You are ignoring all the cars that are turning left from Stewart. The total volumes going over the I-5 overpass is clearly shown as 478. Multiplying that by a reasonable peak hour assumption of 1.2 people per car puts the number at 573 people in cars going over the overpass. Many of those turning left from Stewart are avoiding upstream congestion on Denny and are using other east-west streets north of Denny to eventually get to the overpass.

   *****

   The one thing we don’t know is how many lanes have been temporarily blocked due to construction in SLU in the area. There are often lane closures that meter upstream traffic. So any count may be flawed.

   *****

   I get how crossing I-5 is a huge bottleneck at Denny for transit. I get how we need faster transit on the corridor generally. But an obviously flawed analysis claim doesn’t advance a solution; it actually does the opposite. It more makes you look biased to the point of being illogical and unbelievable.

   1. Please stand at a bus stop on Denny and count the number of people in the cars you see go past.

      It’s maybe one out of every 20 cars has more than 1 person, at best.

   2. The Seattle Times shows that in 2024, 193,272 people drove alone to work while 22,125 people carpooled: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/as-fewer-in-seattle-work-remotely-heres-how-people-are-getting-to-work/. Only a tiny fraction of vehicles will have passengers in them and does not change the conclusions of the article.

      For those accessing local destinations and cross-roads within SLU, there are numerous alternatives routes other than Denny that are faster than taking Denny itself. It would also be impossible to accurately account for all of those drivers and attempting to do so would make this article incoherent and explode the amount of analysis required.

      How will cars turning left from Stewart be impacted at all by a bus lane? This article is focusing on the impact that bus lanes will have and drivers on Stewart would receive none.

      This traffic study was delayed by an entire year so that SDOT could perform their analysis during a period where all lanes were open. SDOT’s original plan was to have any solutions outlined by the study implemented by now but they only just announced its results. The traffic study is 516 pages, they know better than to waste all that time and effort by using a foundation of non-representative traffic counts.

   3. > “Just counting the “drivers” is just wrong and treats the auto passengers as non-existent”
      But vehicles average like 1.2 to 1.3 people. Does scaling the 341 by 1.2 really change anything? We have to estimate peak hour transit ridership already based on a 3PM to 7PM number. Someone in the thread above puts the number between 225 (absolute minimum) and 600 (literal maximum capacity).

      > “You are ignoring all the cars that are turning left from Stewart.”
      This is perfectly fair. Cars turning left from Stewart are presumably not coming from the vicinity of Denny, and are not directly comparable to riders on Route 8. They are also much less impacted by any bus lane west of the overpass. You are saying that “many” drivers are avoiding congestion on Denny. How many? I don’t think that is an easy thing to figure out. Plus, if you get far enough north surely people prefer Lakeview.

      There are inherent issues doing this kind of analysis bring from a data veracity standpoint, but there is nothing that makes me think of this as “obviously flawed”. Maybe “limited”, but the 8 needs priority like a fish needs water, this is just one way to point that out. Another way – try catching the 8 at 5PM from John and Broadway every day and measure how late your bus is. I work near Denny/Dexter, and sometimes look at when the next bus is coming when I leave – the worst I’ve seen is 22 minutes and 25 minutes for the next buses. That’s a bus that is at least 12 minutes late before it even gets to Dexter. I thought about living in the parts of Capitol Hill when I moved to Seattle a few months back, but the thought of relying on a bus like the 8 made me think twice. These are the decisions people make – they simply do not ride the 8 – and despite all of this, it’s still one of the most productive routes in Seattle.

      I don’t care about if a rough estimate of bus ridership vs. car ridership is 100% accurate, I care about the rough proportionality. And I think it’s obvious from this, based on the limitations of the data available, that it’s about even (despite the already outlined issues with the speed of the eight). If we limit our analyses to only strictly verifiable data, we will always be biased towards modes and data that have easily accessible and verifiable data (re: cars).

   4. “The Seattle Times shows that in 2024, 193,272 people drove alone to work while 22,125 people carpooled.”

      Not all the cars in the road at peak hour are commuters going to and from work, especially now that work from home and flextime are more common. The occupancy may be about 1.1 for going to and from work but it’s not all trips.

      And you aren’t even counting the 1.1 occupancy. You are saying it’s just 1.0. That’s just wrong!

   5. “You are saying that “many” drivers are avoiding congestion on Denny. How many? I don’t think that is an easy thing to figure out. Plus, if you get far enough north surely people prefer Lakeview.”

      It’s true that it’s not easy to figure out. However it does happen. Hypothetically, if I’m driving from my office building parking garage on Harrison in SLU and want to get home to my Madrona mansion, I’m probably not going to drive on Fairview to Denny and turn left. I’m going to drive to Eastlake/ Stewart to Denny and turn left there instead.

      It makes no sense to summarily ignore those left turns from Stewart. It’s factually wrong to do say that they’re not crossing I-5 at Denny when SDOT says that they are in its data.

      1. i mean usually these traffic studies already over count vehicles when compared against pedestrian. At any one intersection there will always be higher car counts as they can easily drive through 100+ intersections.

         While a pedestrian might only cross through 5 or 10 intersections. but it’s not as if a pedestrian making a trip is inherently worth less than a car making a trip. a person driving to starbucks will be counted in say 50 intersection studies while a person walking to starbucks will only be counted 5/6 times.

         If you want to make it truly accurate we’d need to count unique pedestrians on eastbound denny way at fairview n and say westlake ave as well.

      2. I’m excluding Stewart because the article focuses on the impacts of a bus lane and drivers headed east from Stewart would interact with a single inch of new bus lane. It doesn’t matter if there are 0 drivers turning left from Stewart or 100,000 as none of them would even notice if the bus lane were installed.

         Sure, technically I could have specified that when I said “eastbound drivers over I-5” that I meant “eastbound drivers on Denny Way coming continuing straight over I-5 at Stewart” but doing so is excessively wordy and pedantic. Similarly, I’m able to just say “drivers headed to I-5 S” and you understand that I’m only considering drivers turning right from eastbound Denny. I don’t have to specify that I’m excluding drivers heading south from Stewart or west on Denny because those drivers are completely irrelevant to this discussion.

      3. Hypothetically, if I’m driving from my office building parking garage on Harrison in SLU and want to get home to my Madrona mansion, I’m probably not going to drive on Fairview to Denny and turn left.

         Sure, but you are in the minority. You could have gone over Lakeview Boulevard. That is what Google is telling me is the best route (https://maps.app.goo.gl/TPWcLHCNyEnto3QH9). So basically have to be east of Fairview but prefer going via Stewart/Denny even though Google will tell you it is faster to go Lakeview Boulevard. Sorry, but there are very few of those drivers. In the grand scheme of things they are irrelevant to any bus lanes west of Stewart. These numbers are bound to estimates and a handful of people driving that way doesn’t really matter.

         Where they could be relevant is if you added bus lanes on Denny over I-5. That’s because there probably are quite a few drivers who get off the freeway at Stewart and turn left onto Denny to head up the hill. But that is another subject.

   6. When cars have a average of 1.3 people, passengers are mostly nonexistent. That’s part of the reason Denny Way is so congested.

   7. “For those accessing local destinations and cross-roads within SLU, there are numerous alternatives routes other than Denny that are faster than taking Denny itself. It would also be impossible to accurately account for all of those drivers and attempting to do so would make this article incoherent and explode the amount of analysis required.”

      It’s irrelevant too. The issue is congestion impacting buses on Denny Way. Cars not on Denny Way aren’t part of it. Drivers avoid Denny Way if they can for good reason, just like bus riders avoid the 8 if they can. Drivers can just go around a few blocks. Bus riders have to take time-consuming detours to Pine Street to transfer to another bus route to Capitol Hill. That’s why they flock to the 8 even though it’s so bad.

7. Have bus lanes on Minor between Denny and Olive Way, and the on Olive Way between Minor and Denny been considered (by removing parking and reconfiguring the streets)?

   The I-5 Denny Way overpass feels steep, narrow and unsafe. Standing on a bus is particularly scary and dangerous. So why not jog Route 8 two blocks southward in this “V” routing (just adding one turn) and skip the whole mess, leaving it for cars to deal with?

   Maybe it’s been studied in the past and rejected. But it looks to me to have some merit to at least study or study again.

   1. How is that worth studying? There’s already a bus lane from Minor to I-5. That’s one of the few parts of the corridor that works.

   2. Here’s a variation to ponder:

      Make Denny westbound for cars and buses between Olive Way and Minor, with eastbound cars routed to Minor (add a traffic lane) and then up Olive Way — while Denny is given a contra-flow bus-only eastbound lane from Minor all the way up to Olive Way?

      1. A bus lane already exists from Minor to Stewart and traffic between Stewart and Olive only has minimal impact to Route 8 so what you’re describing is unnecessary.

         As a reminder, Route 8 is slower than conga-lining, hopscotching, jumping rope, leapfrogging over one another’s heads, cha-cha-sliding, etc… west of Fairview. That is where we need to be focusing and not to the east.

         SDOT did study blocking right turns onto Yale and forcing all I-5 drivers onto Minor instead on pages 29 – 33 in the traffic study and found that it would yield no tangible benefits to Route 8.

      2. Oh, I like it. If you are heading up the hill (in a car) it is a detour. But you still get there. You continue to fill up the four lanes on Denny over I-5. So, north to south you have:

         1) Westbound bus-only lane up to Stewart. It would transition to a BAT lane between Stewart and Minor.
         2) Westbound general purpose lane (straight-only).
         3) Westbound general purpose lane for turning left (onto Stewart).
         4) Eastbound bus-only (contraflow) lane.

         East of Minor it becomes more of a traditional BAT lane roadway (a BAT lane and general-purpose lane going each direction).

8. Thank you for the analysis. It takes a village.

   Note that Route 8 was first implemented in 1995 by a community driven process; hours were taken from Capitol Hill and Queen Anne routes. The north-south leg was added in June 1997. That leg was revised in 2009, 2016, and with the East Link Connections ordinance (2026?). Over time, the frequency was improved. There was a severe reliability crisis during the Mercer Street projects. Some in Transit Operations suggested that Route 8 be split; it was not. The growth in SLU traffic has led to another crisis.

   The piece mentions the Yale Avenue on ramp; it attracts enough traffic to jam Denny Way in both directions. I hope SDOT closes Yale Avenue just south of Denny or makes it northbound only. The I-5 bound traffic could use Howell street; it has much less transit since Lynnwood Link. Southbound traffic could also use the deep bore.

   Maximum ridership was probably in fall 2018. Note that a recent STB piece provided Route 8 data for signups before and after Covid. The east-west leg may attract about 80 percent of the stop level boardings. The north-south leg jogs back and forth between MLK Jr. Way and 23rd Avenue. The diversion to Jackson Square is a vestige of the original terminal. I think Route 8 would be most effective if it served 23rd Avenue with its density; that is where the streetcar ran. It would save several minutes; they could be plowed into more trips. Of course, it could serve the Lighthouse for the Blind on South Plum Street more directly. See service guideline four on route spacing.

   Commenters mentioned a merger with Route 11. This was mentioned in the Enhanced Trolley Study that was part of the AWV replacement alternatives. It was among the options offered to the public in 2015 for the U Link process. In fall 2024, Metro changed Route 11 to serve the Route 8 pathway MLK and Olive Ways. It has excellent transfers with frequent radial services, the G line and Link. So, King County Metro could be part of the village that improves Route 8. With an ordinance, the western end of Route. Could be Uptown instead of 2nd Avenue. (It now Live loops ; a weak design).
   Adding Route 11 would help make Denny Way BAT lanes cost effective.

   The Seattle street grid shifts at Denny and Yesler ways. Madison Street is another diagonal arterial. The late Jemae Hoffman pointed out their issues.

   1. Typo: Jackson Square relates to June 1997, not 1995 or original.

9. Looks like Wilson is the next mayor. Bus lanes on Denny, here we come!

10. I rode the #8 in the first months it was around (late ’95 I think?) It was a funky, slow ride even back then. I’m sure traffic isn’t helping now. Bus lanes on Denny might help some? But then traffic on Denny just sucks 24-7 at this point.

    One thing posters here need to think about is if Seattle changes zoning and starts building more housing away from light rail and rapid lane lines, what’s that going to traffic? And parking? City buses?

    Life in the City means gridlock and traffic. Density just increases that. I’ve been to Chicagoland and NYC and even with trains, there’s a lot traffic and getting around can be difficult if you’re not on a major transit line.

    If you can’t get off a bus and walk home for 6-8 blocks during drive time because of awful gridlock, maybe City Life isn’t for you? Because that’s the way it is in Metros around the world. Seattle isn’t a little po’dunk regional city any longer, for better or worse…. and the traffic? Bound to get worse. Cities rise and fall all the time… things change. Seattle is blessed by the natural beauty of Puget Sound and Lake Washington… that are also a curse to transit and housing.

    1. One thing posters here need to think about is if Seattle changes zoning and starts building more housing away from light rail and rapid lane lines, what’s that going to traffic? And parking? City buses?
       It seems to me that most of the frequent posters on here have been thinking (and talking) for a very long time about what will be required for our transportation systems to accommodate more housing. I think many of these discussions acknowledge that lots of this new housing (hence, density) will be and currently is (see: SLU) in formerly less dense areas, and there has been a lot of focus on relatively minor routes. Also, I think the implicit assumption here that there isn’t currently significant room for density on the Link and Rapid Ride lines is basically wrong―there are many places in the walksheds of frequent lines in the city proper that are still quite suburban.

       And maybe the “traffic? And parking?” bits of your comment are rhetorical, but as you point out, traffic really will increase with density, and I think it is well established that there is no practical urban roadway design or amount of parking that will mitigate this at sufficient density. This is why we should be investing our limited roadway space in transportation methods that will scale to density, namely: busses.

       Life in the City means gridlock and traffic. Density just increases that. I’ve been to Chicagoland and NYC and even with trains, there’s a lot traffic and getting around can be difficult if you’re not on a major transit line. […] If you can’t get off a bus and walk home for 6-8 blocks during drive time because of awful gridlock, maybe City Life isn’t for you?
       I do not think it’s unrealistic for busses with proper priority and well-placed higher-capacity (i.e., rail) transit to mostly eliminate this. There are good examples around the world. Because you mention them: both NYC and Chicago have made a lot of progress on this. The peak frequency of NYC’s bus network in particular puts ours to shame; their bunching and speed problems are quite real, but I think this is more of a political than a practical problem in most cases (including here), because paint and signal upgrades are not infeasibly expensive. Of course, roadway improvements are more complex and costly, but these are still very much within reach and not required on every route.

       1. June Foamer,

          Traffic is a political issue? Any place in the USA with density has bad traffic. I’d admit to that being somewhat of a social problem (Americans love cars)… but traffic as a political problem? I don’t buy that for a minute.

          It’s quite possible that the next Seattle government may give buses priority on Denny Way and other crowded Seattle arterial roads. But that doesn’t make traffic any better. The idea that people are going to find it impossible to drive and start taking the bus isn’t true. It will just make drivers pissed off at the Seattle government and elect a more car friendly one in 4 years. Believe it, I’ve watched this sort of political swing in Seattle for 40 years now.

          Denny Way will just to continue to be a disaster no matter what happens. There’s nothing that can be done about it, if Seattle keeps growing. You can’t stuff 10 pounds of shit in a 5 pound bag regardless of your political affiliation.

          It’s not like there isn’t a lot of good things density brings to a City and that’s the reason people keep moving to Seattle. But the traffic cannot get better. It’s tough work just to keep it from getting worse.

       2. “The idea that people are going to find it impossible to drive and start taking the bus isn’t true. ”

          Why has Link’s and Metro’s ridership been rising year after year? Both throughout the 2010s and after the pandemic setback. Seattle’s participation has risen faster than its number of cars or cart trips, and downtown’s SOV commute mode share got down to 30%. There have been some car-trip increases and and data volatility in the past couple years that has made the long-term trend less certain, but ridership is going consistently up.

          Who are the 5,000 people riding the 2 Line Starter Line when no express buses have been cut for it and cross-lake service hasn’t even started yet? How were they getting around before the 2LSL opened?

          Who are the thousands of RapidRide G riders who weren’t on transit before it started? They must be new trips because the increase was far higher than decreases on surrounding routes, to the point that the G shot up to one of the top five or ten Metro routes.

       3. “It’s quite possible that the next Seattle government may give buses priority on Denny Way and other crowded Seattle arterial roads. But that doesn’t make traffic any better.”

          Did June say it would? The point of bus-lane priority is to speed up the buses, not decrease congestion in the car lanes. Drivers can sit in the congestion they’re causing, or drive around the Denny Way bottleneck. Even if congestion decreases, that may create induced demand for more car trips, and congestion would return to the current level. That’s the tragedy of the commons and how cars don’t scale.

          “Traffic is a political issue? Any place in the USA with density has bad traffic. I’d admit to that being somewhat of a social problem (Americans love cars)… but traffic as a political problem? I don’t buy that for a minute.”

          Why do you think people voted for Link and Stride and RapidRide and Seattle’s TBD? They want an alternative to driving in congestion or having no choice but to drive. A lot of people do want to drive, but a lot of drivers don’t. Or at least they don’t want to drive for all the trips they’re driving for now.

          Psst. Voters in Seattle are supporting transit and denser housing whenever they have the opportunity, with few exceptions. The maximum Comprehensive Plan alternative the mayor and council watered down due to their own reservations and pressure from a small number of vocal nimbys, probably would have passed if it had been put up for a public vote. Seattle is over 50% renters now, and its share of transit riders keeps increasing. Even the far northern districts that are heavily single-family and might be expected to be nimby and less transit-supportive, are voting for transit and density and candidates that support; e.g., Pinehurst station.

       4. It’s quite possible that the next Seattle government may give buses priority on Denny Way and other crowded Seattle arterial roads. But that doesn’t make traffic any better.

          Nor will it bring bring peace to the Middle East. But then again, no one said it would.

          Denny Way will just to continue to be a disaster no matter what happens.

          Not for buses! That is the whole point of this post. Come on, tacomee, try to stick to the topic at hand.

    2. You tend to ask so many questions packed with so many assumptions in a few paragraphs it’s hard to untangle them.

       Starting from ideals, of course traffic clogs the roads in New York and London: cars don’t scale, so only a few cars fill a multilane road. That’s the problem on Denny Way. But people in New York and London and Chicago have an out: they can go underground and take the tube and bypass all that traffic. New York has built dozens of miles of bikeways since 2000 that also bypass traffic. And it’s building bus-only lanes that do the same thing. I think it built bus lanes on 14th Street and is now considering them somewhere else. I don’t know exactly how much bus lanes or bike lanes these cities have built so I can’t assert that. But the principle remains that more is better.

       Denny Way is especially bad relative to other Seattle streets. 2nd Ave, 4th Ave, Pine Street, Jackson Street, Aurora, etc, have their congestion problems, but none of them drag down buses as much as Denny Way does. Even where Denny has bus lanes now, the freeway entrance blocks them from working. That’s how Race the L8 was able to cha-cha and saunter faster than a #8 bus. That’s extraordinary. If you look at the Pine Street buses taking 2-4 light cycles to get through the adjacent Bellevue and Melrose intersections and decide to walk instead, you can’t get to the next bus stop before the bus leaves you behind in the dust. Because once it gets through that bottleneck, it goes much faster than you can. So Denny Way needs targeted interventions.

       “if Seattle changes zoning and starts building more housing away from light rail and rapid lane lines, what’s that going to traffic?”

       We want urban villages and the shoulder areas around them built up to medium density (4-7 story) first. Those are just a few blocks from Link, RapidRide, and other trunk bus lines. Southwest Capitol Hill and SLU are already built up of course. But if you look at West Seattle, density drops precipitously just one block on both sides of California Ave, except like two blocks around 42nd & Alaska. Mt Baker has only a few 6+ story buildings, and zoning drops rapidly just 2-3 blocks around the station (excepting the high school, which presumably can’t be densified). Westwood Village is still a strip mall of one-story big-box stores around a surface parking lot. So those are opportunities for infill development right there, which are already served by enhanced transit lines or will be this decade (RapidRide R), or could be (north-south California).

       Developers will naturally put the biggest buildings near those areas because that’s what the market demands. And we’ll be lucky if the city even just expands the urban villages and fills in the gaps between them. The just-passed Comprehensive Plan update did some expansions, but Harrell’s and 1-2 other councilmembers’ amendments reversed other proposed expansions, so it’s not as good as it could be, and that just kicks the can down the road another decade where we’ll have this same battle again and we’ll still be behind where we could be.

       The city is unwilling to allow medium density citywide, so we don’t even have to think about midrises in Magnolia or five blocks east of Rainier Ave or 35th Ave NE because they’re not going to happen. Instead the city is required by the state to allow 4-6 units per lot citywide, and the best that we could conceivably hope for is a little more than that. And even if residential areas are upzoned, only a fraction of that capacity will be built up. So that won’t be much more density, and thus won’t have much impact on congestion or transit demand there. It won’t be like we suddenly need an articulated bus route where there’s no bus now because thousands more people will be in the neighborhood. The areas that will/should get thousands more people are already near major transit routes.

       “If you can’t get off a bus and walk home for 6-8 blocks during drive time because of awful gridlock, maybe City Life isn’t for you?”

       Or maybe we design our cities better like hundreds of cities around the world do. We don’t have to be a city where “I have no choice but to drive. I have to wait half an hour for the bus. My closest bus route doesn’t go to a good supermarket or other things or a good transfer stop, or it takes half an hour to get there. My bus gets stuck in the same congestion my car does.” Those are all things that can or should be fixed. Not dismissed as “That’s the inevitable corollary of living in a city.” Because that’s just false, and we constantly highlight cities that have overcome these problems.

       “Cities rise and fall all the time”

       We need our cities to succeed. Otherwise it ruins millions of people’s lives. It’s wasteful to just throw away the pieces of the solution we’ve luckily inherited. And while cities rise and fall, that’s over decades. That’s like geological time compared to people’s needs or the span of people’s youth, primary career years, or retirement.

       1. “Starting from ideals, of course traffic clogs the roads in New York and London”

          One of the things I actually enjoyed about London was being able to cross the streets so easily, due to the traffic not being particularly bad. A fair number of the auto bridges over the Thames are just two lanes, and I never saw any stopped traffic on them. Southwark Bridge? One lane each direction plus bike lanes. Same with Waterloo Bridge, Lamberth Bridge, Chelsea Bridge, and others.

       2. One of the things I actually enjoyed about London was being able to cross the streets so easily, due to the traffic not being particularly bad.

          Congestion pricing might have helped. It is really the only way to reduce traffic.

       3. Mike Orr,

          Seattle could change drastically over the next 10 years. Seattle doesn’t have a history of slow steady growth, it’s been a boom (and bust) town since the days of “Skid Road”. I’m a big Murray Morgan fan BTW.

          There’s an old saying… “I’d rather be lucky than good” . I think the people who showed up in Seattle in the window between 1977 and 1987 were, by and large, lucky to catch a city on the upswing. Those people moving to Seattle 2027? Who knows? The City certainly seems played out to me at this point, but new arrivals seem willing to pay $4000 to $7,000 to move into a small rental in a “vibrant” neighborhood. It’s pretty damn tough to stick around if don’t have that kind of money.

          On the National level I think the GOP is growing with car oriented growth and new home sales in States like Texas and Tennessee. What Katie Wilson (or Bruce if he somehow wins) faces is not only a lack of housing, but no realistic way to pay for building more. In Red States they just slam up houses and sell them…. and invest as little as possible in roads or other infrastructure. A town like Round Rock can use people’s personal credit to grow… .where as Katies’s “social housing” needs millions (billions really) in public investment.

          Funding transit on top of that? That makes the City of Seattle on the hook for housing, transportation, medical care…. everything for some of lower income people. That’s a lot of heavy lifting. I’m not saying it can’t be done or Seattle should do it… but fiscal responsibility is an absolute must here.

          Meanwhile Texas has home mortgages, lower cost charter schools, private run prisons, private utilities … it’s not that their vision for growth is better than Seattle’s, it’s just they have a way better funding mechanism.

          I think Councilwomen Rinck has the right idea about improving bus service. It’s affordable and quick to build. Denny Way, Rainier Ave and Aurora would be great places to start. On the other hand, Sound Transit is not going to help a progressive agenda because of high costs and little payout over the next ten years. I’d guess Seattle’s social housing dream flounders over the next 10 years and the West Seattle light rail project’s timeline and price tag just explode.

       4. “new arrivals seem willing to pay $4000 to $7,000 to move into a small rental in a “vibrant” neighborhood”

          1 BRs in Seattle are around $1800 minimum to the low $2000s typical. A 2 BR is in the upper $2000s to $3000s. Mine was raised to $2100 this summer but I talked them down to $2050. I think they’re charging new people $2100 or $2200. $7000 would get you a waterfront penthouse or maybe a largish house. You once cherry-picked a building in U Village that’s far higher than what I see in Capitol Hill, so I don’t know what’s going on with that one. Even San Francisco rents are in the $3000s-$4000s.

          “Seattle doesn’t have a history of slow steady growth, it’s been a boom (and bust) town”

          The population level doesn’t change precipitously. The 2010s was the fastest growth in my lifetime and is unlikely to be repeated, and even that wasn’t precipitous. Nor was the drop after the 2008 crash. Every other building in the Summit area had a “For Rent” sign and rents dropped $100 or $200 and stayed flat for a few years, then carried on up. The “character” of the I think the GOP is growing with car oriented growth and new home sales in States like Texas and Tennessee. neighborhoods didn’t change, or most of the businesses.

          “I think the GOP is growing with car oriented growth and new home sales in States like Texas and Tennessee. ”

          It amounts to a few districts in a decade. And the growth to the Sunbelt is already reversing a bit, people going back to the Rust Belt or California after the pandemic surge. I doubt Idaho’s zoning is as permissive as Texas’s.

       5. Mike Orr,

          Unless you have 4-5 thousand dollars and excellent credit, you can’t rent in most of Seattle. I have friends working for Blanton Turner (property management) and even though there are some empty units in Seattle, a number likely to grow a little more, it’s tough to make a profit on buildings 25 years old or less without getting at least $2000 a month in rent. My guess is landlords can withstand 4-5% vacancy rates over a 1-2 year recession easier than sub $2000 rents.

          It’s true that transit ridership as grown faster than driving in Seattle, but the trouble is both modes have grown with the population increases. There’s no way to “grow” Denny Way

       6. “My guess is landlords can withstand 4-5% vacancy rates over a 1-2 year recession”

          They’d better. 5-10% is the normal sustainable vacancy rate where rents remain stable. 4% is already getting into a tight market where renters don’t have as many choices. Seattle’s fastest rent growth is associated with a 3% or lower rate. When it gets down to 1-2%, that’s really an emergency, and that’s when rents rise 10-15% per year, because renters don’t have choices and have to take take the first unit they can within an hour of opening, and that’s when landlords have the most leverage to price-gouge. 1-2% vacancy has been a common problem in San Francisco, and it happened in Seattle in the 2010s.

          If landlords can’t live on 5-10% vacancy long-term, they need to look at their business model.

       7. “Unless you have 4-5 thousand dollars and excellent credit, you can’t rent in most of Seattle. ”

          Yes, there is a problem with requiring income at 3X the rent to qualify for a place when rents are $2000+. That’s a corollary of the 30% principle that one should pay only 30% of their income on housing. What are the hundreds of thousands of people who don’t make $6000/month supposed to do? The previous units I lived in, 1905-1965 mom-n-pop buildings, did not require 3X, but my current 2004 investor-owned building did. But the rent was only $1175 in 2010 (after a $100 discount due to the 2008 crash), so I only had to show $3525 income.

    3. One thing posters here need to think about is if Seattle changes zoning and starts building more housing away from light rail and rapid lane lines, what’s that going to traffic? And parking? City buses?

       Seattle has built away from transit for decades. This has mostly occurred in the suburbs. Someone in the suburbs is far more likely to drive for their trip than use an alternative mode. There are places that are fairly isolated from the traffic. For example west Magnolia is pretty much a dead end. But most of the city is not. There is traffic in Wallingford not because of all the cars in Wallingford but because of all the people in Greater Seattle — some of whom are driving through (or too) Wallingford. That’s life in the big city.

       The solution is not to try and shrink the city. That would only happen with a big (localized) recession. Even then it takes decades. The days of driving on Denny and making the lights in the evening are over. (Yes, I actually remember that from when I was a kid.) There is bound to be too much traffic. The answer is to what is suggested in this post. Add bus lanes, increase frequency, create a better transit network. Basically give people an alternative to driving.

    4. Bus lanes on Denny might help some? But then traffic on Denny just sucks 24-7 at this point.

       I don’t think anyone is proposing peak-only bus lanes. If traffic sucks 24-7 on Denny then 24-7 bus (or BAT) lanes would definitely help.

       1. Most of the time that I’ve seen peak-only bus lanes on city streets around the US is because the curb is allocated for parking at other times.

          Maybe I’m forgetting some but I am pretty sure that Denny Way has no on-street parking west of Olive Way.

    5. Again, priorities. 24/7 bus lanes are good even if they’re not needed 24 hours, because they’ll be there when they’re unexpectedly needed. Like or a big midday event, or if a collision or maintenance closes a lane and causes a traffic jam. And it shows a commitment to transit like a trolley wire or streetcar track does, and encourages the authorities to have even more transit on that street to leverage the infrastructure investment.

       1. I would actually argue that a part-time bus lane can only result from a misunderstanding of the problem.

          It presupposes that there is a time when you need to prioritize cars over buses. Such a time doesn’t exist. At any given point in time, you have one of two situations. Either there isn’t traffic congestion, or there is. If there isn’t traffic congestion, another general-purpose lane won’t help anyone go faster. If there is traffic congestion, you want a lane dedicated for buses so that the space can be used more efficiently.

       2. Well, there is one exception to that, which is traffic congestion during a period where the transit agency is too cheap to run the buses with acceptable frequency. For instance, everyone going home from a Kraken game at 10 PM may cause congestion. But, if the bus only runs every half hour at that time, the public benefit of the bus lane is going to be limited.

          This is why maintaining good frequency as many hours per day as possible is so important. A bus lane with no buses does not offer any alternative to driving, but it does feel like wasted spaces to drivers sitting in traffic who can’t use it, and generates resentment.

       3. Suppose we started by designing the streets saying they’ll have two bus lanes minimum, and then maybe one or more car lanes. Bus lanes are poor man’s light rail or metro. Those would have exclusive lanes, so the bus routes that imitate them should have exclusive lanes too. They should be designed like we’re serious about transit, not just an afterthought or half neglect. Overservice is better than underservice, especially when we’re digging out of 80 years of underservice. Denny Way is an example of how far behind we are, and the drag on our economy and environment by having substandard infrastructure.

       4. “Well, there is one exception to that, which is traffic congestion during a period where the transit agency is too cheap to run the buses with acceptable frequency. For instance, everyone going home from a Kraken game at 10 PM may cause congestion.”

          Event traffic management is a whole other beast. Most times, temporary traffic signs and addition traffic control officers are part of it. Our transit agencies have long had additional service for special events too. And it’s mostly managed and funded by the event sponsors. And the tough time is just that 15-30 minute window after an event.

          So I don’t see much need to forgo any 24/7 bus lanes just for event traffic management.

          SDOT does have electronic signs warning of event traffic that they often use. I don’t think WSDOT does this as effectively.

       5. “Suppose we started by designing the streets saying they’ll have two bus lanes minimum, and then maybe one or more car lanes.”

          Regardless of the lane restrictions, through streets should be designed to be able to accommodate local buses. Things like curb radii, concrete pavement that doesn’t squish under a stopped bus and curb heights are all basics. (Man that basic SDOT curb height mistake on Madison deserves calling out.)

          One problem that Seattle is notorious for is modal transportation plans that are published with little to no consideration of how other modes are affected. The plans are often made by promoting what’s best for each mode and not what’s best for each street. Then they get finalized without residents knowing about them, creating controversy later.

          That said, the more lanes the scarier and more time consuming it is for a pedestrian to cross the street. So I think it’s better to have different streets designated for different things as opposed to designate one street for everything. If a street does everything and gets really wide we get dangerous outcomes like MLK or Aurora.

          As a pedestrian, I would actually rather cross two one-way paired streets than a single two-way, overly-wide street. There’s just fewer feet to cross and fewer traffic movements to worry about.

       6. I would actually argue that a part-time bus lane can only result from a misunderstanding of the problem.

          It presupposes that there is a time when you need to prioritize cars over buses. Such a time doesn’t exist.

          Agreed. If traffic is so light that you don’t need bus lanes, then driving the single general purpose lane is easy as well.

          Suppose we started by designing the streets saying they’ll have two bus lanes minimum, and then maybe one or more car lanes.

          Agreed. Although I think the eventual goal should be at most one general- purpose lane on each street (each direction) other than the freeways. We should have bus lanes and if we have even more space left over than widen the sidewalks or add bike lanes. But there is simply no reason for a street like Denny to have more than one general-purpose lane each direction.

          Again, not in the long term. What is true of Denny is true of Mercer. But I sure as hell wouldn’t change Mercer now. It may be the last to change (after Aurora gets “reimagined”, Lake City Way is one general purpose lane each direction, etc.). Mercer doesn’t even have bus lanes. Let it be a car-sewer for now. The goal is Amsterdam. But getting there should be done in the right order.

    6. Even though various projects have had laudable goals, the number of lane eliminations in Seattle seemed to have cumulatively created more traffic congestion than population increases have.

       When a neighborhood loses a third of its arterial street capacity, it’s numerically the same as adding 50 percent to its population.

       SDOT will sometimes change signal timings to offset impacts – but within a few years the signal sensors quit working which leads to problems like Link trains stalled for 45 seconds because the signal thinks there’s a line of left-turning cars when there’s actually no cars there. SDOT will neglect a malfunctioning signal for months. One in my neighborhood went that way for over 2 years!

       Of course, SDOT doesn’t study or report cumulative traffic congrstion impacts of all their singular projects combined. SDOT doesn’t report the cumulative impact of not tending to malfunctioning signals either, especially on Metro buses and Link trains.

       They’re too busy drawing up the latest trendy traffic control technique with the reason given to chase the obviously unattainable Vision Zero goal — even though most accidents involve people breaking laws (like drunk drivers, aggressive bicyclists and distracted pedestrians) more than the streets being badly designed.

       One reason Denny Way is more congested is because other Downtown streets have seen a cumulative decrease in throughput, like Second and Fourth Avenues among other streets. That’s never mentioned.

       I think we need a new framework when we change our streets that involves a more objective and comprehensive assessment. “I think it’s a cool, eco-friendly idea” is amateurish and not thorough enough.

       1. Most of this is speculation and runs counter to existing research. SDOT themselves publish traffic reports and study traffic after major changes. Vehicle counts on Denny have not increased in decades

          https://www.seattle.gov/transportation/document-library/reports-and-studies

       2. the number of lane eliminations in Seattle seemed to have cumulatively created more traffic congestion than population increases have.

          Nonsense. The city grew. Holy cow, we are talking about Denny here. A modern Rip Van Winkle would freak out if they saw South Lake Union now, especially Denny.

          One reason Denny Way is more congested is because other Downtown streets have seen a cumulative decrease in throughput, like Second and Fourth Avenues among other streets. That’s never mentioned.

          No, because that would be a stupid assessment. Second and Fourth run perpendicular. They *feed* Denny. If anything, the lack of good feeders to Denny should make it run faster. But you know what street is parallel? Mercer. Mercer has more capacity than ever. They completely redesigned the street to allow for better flow. Has it made traffic better? Of course not. There are just a lot more cars.

          Oh, and has I-5 shrunk? Because it is common now for I-5 to be parking lot southbound starting at around 2:00 in the afternoon. Get real. There are just a lot more cars in the city than there used to be.

       3. “Most of this is speculation and runs counter to existing research.”

          I can tell you from daily observations that the taking of a lane for Rainier has backed up traffic in my neighborhood. The signal at Charlestown backs up well past Andover several hours a day after the change.

          The signal at MLK is worse and northbound traffic can back up as far as Walden. It happens several hours a day.

          These backups did not occur until last year when Rainier became one lane northbound.

          These impacts do not show up in traffic counts. They show up in travel time studies. So saying that counts have not increased ignores the impact.

       4. “SDOT themselves publish traffic reports and study traffic after major changes.”

          Well the link you provided just screams how lazy SDOT has become at evaluations! The last Before and After project study was published a decade ago — and all the ones listed before that were published over 15 years ago.

       5. > the number of lane eliminations in Seattle seemed to have cumulatively created more traffic congestion than population increases have.

          This suggests SDOT’s primary goal should be to minimize congestion. This is only possible by increasing throughput capacity or motivating mode shift by making alternatives less expensive (and not just in regard to literal financial cost). SDOT cannot meaningfully increase vehicle throughput capacity without massively widening streets. Is that what you want?

          Instead, SDOT has moved away from LOS improvements and is instead prioritizing safety, and is strategically using transit lanes to achieve it while getting more for its money with the Seattle Transit Benefit District. This is a good policy.

       6. > The last Before and After project study was published a decade ago

          The list isn’t sorted by date, but alphabetically by report. The most recent report is dated 2020, regarding the NE 65th Street redesign. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect a full before-and-after evaluation report for every single street improvement. I’d rather SDOT spent that effort just implementing the changes they know will achieve the goals of the levies approved by voters.

       7. “The list isn’t sorted by date, but alphabetically by report.”

          Ah I see I did miss that. Still, it’s merely one published study in 8 years (almost 9). The equal time period before 2010-2017 has lots more published.

          And there have been many changes since 2017 including many before Covid.

       8. Converting a GP lane to a BAT lane does generally increase car travel times. It also improves safety and transit travel time. At the end of the day ROW is limited and should to be allocated to the most beneficial use.

          Route 7 is the 2nd busiest route in the state and may soon take the crown for 1st. The bus lanes in aggregate save riders multiple minutes in each direction.

11. i still like the idea of just straight up tolling the denny way southbound i5 ramp or making it hov 3+ at least

12. The wasted hours on the 8 doesn’t just impact Denny and Capitol Hill. It also means service hours are used for buses stuck in traffic that could be providing service in numerous other areas.

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