As part of its 2026 Service Plan, Sound Transit is proposing a new overnight bus service in the corridor of the Link 1 and 2 Lines. These routes would also continue to Everett, Tacoma, and Lakewood. These services will specifically operate during the night after Link stops running, and end shortly before Link begins again the next morning. Service is scheduled to launch in the fall of this year, contingent on the ability of partner agencies to deliver the service. Sound Transit is also launching a pilot of this service on the segment from downtown Seattle to SeaTac starting March 28th, with service roughly every 30 minutes throughout the night.

Despite shadowing the Link 1 Line, the overnight service proposal skips 10 out of 26 current 1 Line stations. Intuitively, the reason for skipping so many stops is probably is to keep the bus moving quickly as it heads to Everett or Lakewood, as well as to keep operating costs and staffing levels manageable. Also, considering that Sound Transit is a regional agency rather than a local one, they may be leaning on King County Metro to provide night-owl service within the city of Seattle. However, though some of the gaps are covered by King County Metro’s own night-owl network, there is not as much overnight service along parts of the 1 Line as you might think.

1 Line overnight service, visualized

Here is an overview of current overnight bus services along the Link 1 Line (including a comparison to the proposed overnight service), in the style of Sound Transit’s diagram of alternative routes to Link (click the image to zoom in):

Here are summaries broken down by route:

  • Overnight service proposal: This shows the proposed overnight service across the entire length of the 1 Line, and the segment launching as a pilot service starting March 28th in a darker and thicker green line. Service on the pilot segment is roughly every 30 minutes from downtown Seattle to SeaTac and Tukwila Intl Blvd Station. Service frequency on the full lines covering stations as far as Federal Way and Lynnwood still have not been announced.
  • Route 7: This is a solid overnight route with roughly hourly service throughout the night, but diverges from the Link corridor south of Mount Baker Station.
  • Route 36: Similar to route 7, this is a well-established overnight route with roughly hourly frequency. It also nicely fills in a bit of the gap that route 7 leaves, serving both Beacon Hill and Othello stations.
  • Route 43: Despite not being a night-owl route (and in fact, this route consists only of route 44 buses going into or out of service), route 43 does provide substantial night-owl service in the southbound direction only (UW to Capitol Hill). Service from 1 to 5am is roughly hourly, but very irregular (with some trips as close as 15 minutes, and as far as nearly two hours).
  • Route 44: This is a night-owl workhorse, with service every 45 minutes plus some bonus westbound runs splitting some of those 45 minute headways into 15-30s. That said, route 44 only connects U-District and UW stations, making it a very limited Link shadow.
  • Route 48: This route connects the Rainier Valley part of Link with the UW part with a straight shot down 23rd Ave. Being a shortcut around Link’s turn toward downtown, it becomes faster than Link itself between Mt Baker and UW starting in the evening. Overnight, it runs a relatively consistent hourly schedule.
  • Route 49: With overnight frequency being consistently every 30 minutes, route 49 runs almost as much at night as it does during the day! This makes it a solid Link replacement for trips between U-District, Capitol Hill, and Westlake Stations. Additionally, trips from 3 to 4:30am continue down 3rd Ave toward Intl Dist/Chinatown.
  • Route 65: Runs hourly through most of the night, but takes a 2-2.5 hour break before the early morning commute. It starts at Shoreline South/148th, but swings east through Lake City and Wedgwood before rejoining Link at UW and U-District stations.
  • Route 67: Has a similar service level as route 65 as the two are connected, except closely following the Link alignment. Hence, route 67 fills in the Link stops that the 65 misses (Northgate and Roosevelt), along with both UW-area stations.
  • Route 70: This route connects U-District station to Westlake along a different path than the 49 (and skips Capitol Hill), but also continues to Pioneer Square on every trip (with select trips continuing to Intl Dist/Chinatown). This route has good frequency at 30 minutes most of the night, but drops off to 45 later in the night.
  • Route 106: This is not a night-owl route as it doesn’t run through the night, but it runs late enough that it adds one or two (depending on the day) hourly trips after Link stops in the southbound direction only. Since it runs parallel to Link along MLK Way, it connects all four Rainier Valley stations to Intl Dist/Chinatown.
  • Route 124: This an hourly night-owl route that connects downtown Seattle to the Tukwila Intl Blvd Station. Additionally, two trips per direction each night get extended to the SEA airport terminal stop (rather than other airport stops on International Blvd), saving nighttime airport workers a walk around the closed SeaTac Link station.
  • RapidRide A Line: This south King County powerhouse provides roughly hourly frequency throughout the night. Being mostly along the Link alignment in the vicinity of its stations, it serves every Link station from Tukwila Intl Blvd to Federal Way Downtown with the exception of Star Lake Station.
  • ST Express 512: This Link feeder route ordinarily operates only beyond Link’s service area. However, one early morning southbound trip continues to Northgate Station daily before Link begins, and on Sundays only (when Link stops running earlier), two half-hourly northbound trips operate from downtown Seattle to U-District (freeway station), Northgate, Mountlake Terrace, and Lynnwood before continuing to Everett.
  • ST Express 574: In the northbound direction, this route provides very early morning service from Federal Way, Star Lake (freeway station) and Kent-Des Moines (freeway station) to SeaTac. This runs every 15-30 minutes starting at 2:42 on weekdays, and every 30 minutes starting at 2:50 on weekends.

Filling in the remaining gaps

With Sound Transit’s overnight service covering both Link and ST Express corridors, it’s likely that Sound Transit will consolidate overnight service on its existing routes (512 and 574) into its new overnight service. That will leave farther out stations with generally good overnight coverage. However, there remains a pretty big gap in overnight service in the Rainier Valley, considering route 106 provides no more than two additional trips after Link stops running, and only in the southbound direction. For true overnight service coverage along Link, King County Metro needs to either upgrade route 106 to a true night-owl route, or consider alternative service options, such as a night-owl only route connecting the Rainier Valley to downtown and the airport. Either of these options may be a possibility in the next few years if a renewal of the Seattle Transit Measure this fall includes funding for them.

61 Replies to “Current and proposed overnight service along the Link 1 Line”

  1. I must be missing something. To get to SEA from DT Seattle you have to take an express bus to Federal Way (no stops) and then get on another bus that just shuttles between Federal Way and SEA? If you’re going to run a bus from CID down I-5 why not go to Tacoma Dome instead of just ending at Federal Way. I know Link ends there but I-5 doesn’t. Skipping the airport seems really dumb. You really think anyone is going to go all the way to Federal Way just to backtrack to SEA?

    Nothing to Bellevue Transit Center or S. Bellevue P&R?

    1. If you are referring to the proposed overnight service, ST is planning three routes: Seattle – Everett, Seattle – Redmond, and Seattle – Lakewood. The Lakewood route will stop at the airport and in Tacoma. The Redmond route will stop in Bellevue.

    2. Bernie, the I-5 South Express Owl with stop at both TIBS and the Airport. It’s in the diagram. It will skip Angle Lake for some reason, though it seems like it would be essentially “no cost” to go by it using the new stub toll road to make the transition between I-5 and the Airport stops.

      2. By “the diagram” I mean that table with horizontal lines representing various night time bus routes. You can click it and it will open in a new tab much larger than it is in the article. It’s much easier to read then.

      3. Thanks, I looked at the enlarged diagram first and read the left side title “Current Night-Owl Service” but missed the first line at the top in small type says “Overnight Service Proposed”. I guess the question is will the proposed service end at the graph or continue on to T-Dome & Lakewood. For the north end it makes sense to shadow the 1 Line to Montlake but then get on 520/I-5 to Westlake. Capitol Hill should be a separate network.

    3. Hi Bernie. Just to clarify, you will not have to go to Federal Way to get from Seattle to the airport overnight. Here’s what’s happening:

      March 28th: Sound Transit is launching a new route from downtown Seattle to Tukwila Intl Blvd station and SeaTac airport. This will allow you to get to the airport without having to transfer.

      Fall 2026: Sound Transit will launch three overnight routes from Seattle to Everett, Redmond, and Lakewood. The latter will replace the pilot service that is beginning next month. You’ll be able to ride the overnight service to the airport, but also to Federal Way, Tacoma, and Lakewood.

      The chart in the article shows the 1 Line and its stations, and which stations the overnight service will cover. Since the article is focused specifically on the 1 Line, I’m showing the parts of the overnight service that’ll cover the 1 Line, but the overnight service will continue beyond the ends of the 1 Line. I also highlighted the SeaTac to Seattle route in a bolder green line because that part is starting sooner. There will also be another overnight service route that will cover the 2 Line, which just isn’t shown on this chart.

      The reason for the chart is that because the overnight service will skip over a bunch of stations (mainly in the Rainier Valley), Link riders will have to find other options overnight if they are heading to one of these stations. These other routes all also go places other than Link stations, but the Link stations they do go to is of particular interest overnight when Link is not running. It’s like the chart of Link alternative service Sound Transit provides during Link distributions, except this version is specifically for night owl service for overnight hours when Link does not operate.

      1. Thanks for the clarification, Alex.

        The pilot route is better than nothing. However it seems silly to me not to run the pilot to Capitol Hill and end at UW. These are going to have more overnight people activity than Westlake will.

      2. I’ve got a different take on Capitol Hill & UW. Given that you’ve got a bus running say north to Seattle you have to hit “downtown”. However you define that it includes something along the Bus Tunnel stations. CID seems like a no brainer given road access. Westlake is planned (so the local TV news outlets say) to be a transit hub and it does connect (sort of, maybe sometimes) with Seattle Center (which isn’t really the center of anything except the 1962 Worlds Fair). Even in the middle of the night routing up and over Capitol Hill to get to UW is a long slog vs getting on I-5/520.

        Anywho, I think Capitol Hill should be it’s own network connecting to DT and the UW. I mean, it’s in the City of Seattle but it’s on it’s own planet :-) Seriously, Capitol Hill is going to have it’s own life after dark and should connect to UW and DT while serving as much as possible of Capitol Hill and Pill Hill. UW does run a shuttle between UW Medical Center and Harborview. Not sure about hours but it’s free and anyone can ride it.

    4. There’s also the existing 124, which is how people are getting between downtown and the airport now. It’s not express but it goes there. With the introduction of an express, route 124 overnight ridership will presumably plummet. The 124 usually terminates at TIB, but when Link isn’t running it’s extended to the airport.

      People in Rainier Valley/Beacon Hill will have to backtrack to Intl Dist to find transit to the airport, the same as they do now when Link isn’t running.

  2. Will this overnight bus be serving the actual airport or will be be stopping on International Blvd beneath the Link station? (Ideally both!)

      1. I’m thinking the arrivals level of the airport and not international blvd. The st 560 and 574 already service that stop. Stopping at 176th serves no purpose without link.

      2. I was wrong my last comment is fake news per the GTFS feed for ST 570. It will stop at s 176th and international blvd.

        As far as turnaround space it likely could layover at the layover facility off of 24th and 188th where the 574 and Normandy park community shuttle (635) currently lay over at and the 156 used to before it got extended to highline college and soon Kent Des Moines station.

    2. I don’t think it can do both, Sam. It would be quite the loop to stop at the in-airport platform, then go back north to 170th and do a hairpin to serve the International Boulevard stops. The other direction would be reverse.

      You can serve one or the other in a normal north-to-south or south-to-north sequence, but not both. I agree with WL; ST will probably choose the International Boulevard stops.

    3. Is the walkway through the Link station even open at night? If not, a stop beneath the Link station does not actually serve the airport.

      2. mhmm is that saying for both bridges?

        > To get from the airport to street level, follow the signs for Link Light Rail, then use the walkway from the airport parking garage to the Link light rail station. The pedestrian bridge connects to the mezzanine level of the light rail station. Keep in mind that you don’t need to pay a fare to use the light rail station pedestrian bridge and the bridge is closed from midnight to 4 a.m.

        the port of seattle says it closes from midnight to 4am

        https://www.portseattle.org/services-amenities/bicycle-resources

    4. The article says the 124 serves the old baggage claim stop because SeaTac station is closed. That may mean the ped bridge to Intl Blvd is also closed, so you can’t get to the airport from the bus stops, but instead have to walk in on the street entrance south of it.

      Metro’s route schedule has never clarified where at the airport the 124 stops at. That was an issue when my friend was working night shift at a north Kent warehouse and looking for a way to get back to Seattle at 4 am. My first thought was the (then) 181 to SeaTac station + the 124 extension, but I couldn’t find confirmation on the 124 schedule which stop it went to at the airport, so I said he’d have to go down and see what it does. In the end, he found a way I hadn’t thought of: 181 to Burien TC + 120 to Seattle. It turned out the earliest morning run from South King County to Seattle was the 120. (I don’t think the H had started yet, but it might have.)

      1. 124 stops at arrivals where the 560 and 574 does during their night owl service.

        Worth noting that the 570 also stops at TIBS. With the 570 and the RapidRide A line (which this fall increases to 30 minute headways at night owl from every hour now) both making the trip, the 124 will likely just make it to TIBS.

  3. While Columbia City station isn’t directly served by Owl service, it has buses on both sides in the 7 and 36. So really the only gap in south end service is Rainier Beach and a connection to TIBS and/or the airport.

    The 7 Owl service seems like a natural for covering this; it’s entirely within Metro’s service area and Rainier Beach Station is within the city. The only oddity would be a “Seattle” route running between RBS and TIBS. If the permanent service continues the 30 minute headway, having the 7 and 128 Owls depart TIBS northbound alternately could provide 30 minute service along Pacific Highway through Tukwila. It might not be so elegant southbound because the two routes are of such different lengths getting to PHS and BAR, but there would still be two buses per hour.

    1. I agree. Sending the 7 out to TIBS (or the airport, or both) seems like it fills one of the few gaps in night owl service along the One Line (after Link adds the new routes).

      1. The 7 also comes close to covering Othello and Columbia City Station. So much so that I would be tempted to include them in the diagram (maybe with an asterisk to note that it doesn’t serve the exact same location). But for a lot of riders, it is better. For example they might walk further to the Columbia City Station (to get to SeaTac) then they would the nearest bus stop served by the 7 (on the way back).

      2. Yes, to the asterisked service to Columbia City and Othello. In fact, for Columbia City, as you noted, for many passengers, Rainier is closer than Link because there’s very little westside walkshed for that station.

    2. I think a case could be made to bring the owl bus from SeaTac up MLK to Columbia City (Alsska/ Columbian Way), and the use Columbian Way to get to the SODO busway (an vice versa). That would mean that only Mt Baker and Beacon Hill would be skipped. Since the runs would be between midnight and 5 am, the bus would hit mostly green lights. The only light that’s on a standard cycle is the Beacon Ave/ Columbian Way intersection.

      Route 36 would intersect this route. If a RapidRide R project ever gets up and running, it would also interface this route.

      It may sound like it adds a bit time to the trip. I don’t think it would be more than about 5-8 minutes. I note that all those suburban stations being considered for service later this year will also add time as the bus will have to swing on and off the freeway at many designated station stops.

    1. I really think KCM/ST needs to plan for a timed transfer for night owl service.

      I agree. Timed transfers with buses are much easier late at night, when there is so little traffic. They should still build in a little bit of float so that the second bus will stick to the schedule even if the first bus is a couple minutes late. Given the buses are so infrequent late at night this is especially important. Given there aren’t that many, it shouldn’t be hard to implement.

  5. It seems like ST has not finalized the full owl service rollout and will be taking input as well as will be assessing how the pilot service works.

    A few general ideas to think about and maybe mention to ST:

    1. Timed transfers. Surely ST realizes that a timed transfer point is required.

    2. Branding. Should ST brand overnight service differently? ST decided to brand Stride different from Express already. I hope they do the same here, especially if overnight routing is similar but not exact to a daytime route with the same number.

    3. Metro interface. If ST is looking to rely on Metro overnight service, they should co-brand those services in route names and system maps and schedules. It’s bad enough to have two daytime transit operators branded separately; not creating a unified overnight service map, diagram and coordinated published schedule would be really bad. No one wants to try to glue the network together in their head. I would even suggest having a uniform branding for all the overnight route numbers (like every route with “N” in front of the number) offered by ST and Metro.

    1. The ST Board hasn’t voted on the Fall 2026 service change yet I don’t think. That’s when the night owls will be finalized. The Seattle-airport pilot in March was advanced early.

      Given the way ST handled the restructure survey, I don’t think there will be any changes from ST’s final proposal. The survey had no way to give feedback on routes ST hadn’t proposed to modify, or other alignments for those routes. Most famously, there was no way to suggest adding a Federal Way stop to the 594 etc, except by sending an email to ST (which I did), but that wouldn’t occur to the vast majority of survey respondents. I was going to write an article about this but I couldn’t articulate my thoughts sufficiently and it seemed futile.

      A co-branded route map is the most likely thing to come out of this. ST and Metro have been coordinating on getting transfer info to passengers; e.g., taking the 36 northbound when the last Link runs end at Beacon Hill (to go to the base before the next station). And ST’s chart of alternative routes when the 1 Line isn’t running or a segment is closed, is in the same spirit, so a dual-agency night owl map would be an extension of those existing efforts.

    2. My guess is they won’t even use ST buses for the pilot. This route is operated by king county metro, and they only operate their ST buses out of east base. My thinking is they’ll operate out of south campus as that’s the most logical (south campus is now technically south and tukwila bases now) rather than deadhead from the spring district.

  7. Or course, the elephant in the room is, how long can this night owl service last, once the fiscal cliff hits? Will this be like 2008, when ST added some trips to some routes, only to remove them as little as a year or two later?

    The inconvenient truth that the cost per service hour to run a bus keeps increasing faster than tax revenue is not going away.

    1. We won’t know what ST will do in the next fiscal austerity period. It ultimately will probably be determined by ridership on its various services as well as allocated operating costs.

      When some sort of budget cutback is required, I expect any remaining Express route that duplicate Link to be first to go. Then I think we will see lower frequencies based on boardings (demand) and coverage. I don’t see anything other than duplicative routes to be wholly dropped — and then only if there is very low demand and productivity.

      So I think how well this overnight service gets used will directly affect whether it’s continued, expanded, reduced or dropped.

      1. It ultimately will probably be determined by ridership on its various services

        Nah, given the ST governing structure it’s more likely to be determined by a whim of the mayor of Buckley. ST has made disastrous decisions both financially and technically… basically forever. The only thing that has worked is getting people to vote for new taxes by over promise and under deliver. Not changing the fundamental governing structure and expecting a different result is, well.. the definition of insanity. KC Metro, after they waddle through the quagmire of DEI manages to, in the end make semi rational decisions.

    2. the cost per service hour to run a bus keeps increasing faster than tax revenue

      Why is this? It’s certainly not because taxes are going down. The cost of diesel hasn’t really changed in the last 10 years. Which means fuel costs are becoming an even smaller percentage of operating cost. We do spend extra money on fancy buses that save the planet but running empty buses does little to curb global warming climate change. Wages have gone up but I’m not sure they’ve done much more than keep up with inflation. And it’s hard to hire and retain enough qualified drives with the existing wage. The cost of benefits, namely health care have gone through the roof but I don’t think the cost of funding the pension has really increased. And with higher turnover I wonder what the percentage is of drivers retiring with a full pension? Administrative costs? I know that if you run inefficient routes the fare recovery is low so that puts strain on the overall budget but does it really raise the cost per service hour? Maybe the omnipotent knowledge of Sam can explain this?

      1. It’s also possible for any member of the public to analyze.

        King County has a neat dashboard which summarizes budget data from 2017 through 2026: https://app.powerbigov.us/view?r=eyJrIjoiOTNmYzYwMDEtNWM5ZC00YjllLThlNzAtZDc1OGRjNzA4MmEwIiwidCI6ImJhZTUwNTlhLTc2ZjAtNDlkNy05OTk2LTcyZGZlOTVkNjljNyJ9

        On the Expenditures tab, you can select “MTD – Metro Transit” and see how expenditures have increased over time. The window on the bottom left (“Operating Expenditure Type”) is controlled by the “Year” you select in near the top-right corner.

        On the Revenue tab, you can see how Metro’s revenues have changed over time.

        Finally, on the FTE tab, you can see how Metro’s number of full-time-equivalent employees has changed over time.

        With some data work, you could probably get a pretty good estimate of how Metro’s average cost per employee has changed over time.

      2. King County has a neat dashboard which summarizes budget data from 2017 through 2026:

        Thanks!!! That’s a great website. The interface is a bit clunky but the data is there. I’d have to cut and paste the numbers for just KC Metro into a spreadsheet to actually look at trends but the gist of it is total employees only dropped once year over year during Covid and two years later had rebounded and then some. But I don’t think that was because there were more bus drivers on the road. Kinda looks like it’s admin that has spiraled out of control.

      3. On the Revenue tab, you can see how Metro’s revenues have changed over time.

        Metro Transit Circa 2022
        Revenue $1.48bn (that’s billion with a B?)

        Expenditure $1.1bn

        This might be a data entry error. If not, “It was the best of times; it was the worse of times.”

      4. > But I don’t think that was because there were more bus drivers on the road. Kinda looks like it’s admin that has spiraled out of control

        The FAQs page explains that the FTE numbers are the budgeted numbers, not actuals. My understanding is that Metro has had trouble hiring the budgeted number of drivers, so it’s backfilled by paying overtime. I’m not sure if actual staffing numbers are posting anywhere, but you can also look at Metro’s annual system reports and dive deeper into operational costs: https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/metro/about/data-and-reports/performance-reports

      5. My understanding is that Metro has had trouble hiring the budgeted number of drivers, so it’s backfilled by paying overtime.

        Roger that! So we’re getting more pencil heads trying to hire drivers with less money because we have to hire more pencil heads to hire more drivers willing to work for less money.

      6. My guess is that it’s a combination of three factors:
        1) Rising health care costs.
        2) Rising Puget Sound-area housing costs (impacts the wage that agencies must pay drivers to attract them, since all drivers must live somewhere).
        3) Increase competition for people willing to do driving jobs with services such as Uber, Amazon, FedEx, UPS, etc. For the same amount of money, it is typically considered less hassle to just carry cargo, rather than deal with the public.

        I’m also going to guess that administration overhead is not the issue here, as it’s something that the public has a natural instinct to exaggerate. Administrative overhead also includes a lot of essential work, like figuring out which ST Express service changes to propose and implement, that you really don’t want to just eliminate.

    3. Of course it’s rising faster!

      Most of the most productive ST Express route segments a decade ago gave way with various Link openings that replaced the bus service. Cross-lake routes are next.

      The remaining Express routes are thus the ones that weren’t showing robust ridership when ST2 was being assembled.

      With the next Link opening that parallels ST Express scheduled for 2035 (TDLE) and upcoming financial issues, I don’t see the imbalance continuing to happen like in the past decade.

      1. @Al S.

        What you say is true but that only makes the overall budget worse. And really not all that much worse because fare recovery is a small percentage of funding. The issue of rising cost per service hour, I think, is different from the issue of how productive routes are. We could have 100% great routes but the cost per hour of running them would still be going up faster than overall revenue (i.e. taxes) and inflation. I’m just not sure why; albeit health care cost of benefits is for sure a factor.

      2. “Most of the most productive ST Express route segments a decade ago gave way with various Link openings that replaced the bus service. ”

        … because Link is more productive than ST Express, and will continue to get more productive over time as the population and ridership increases, thus increasing the number of riders per service hour. One Link route can replace several bus routes, and offer higher frequency and more one-seat trip pairs than the bus routes could.

        The 550 is 15 minutes midday, 30 minutes evenings and Sundays. Link will be 10 minutes. And higher capacity for surges like ballgames. And fast all-day connections between downtown Bellevue, Overlake, Redmond, a new Marymoor Village stop, and even fast to East Main and South Bellevue — which never existed before. And a 1-seat ride from the Eastside to Capitol Hill, every 10 minutes.

        All these trips overlap on the same train using the same service hours.

        Link’s operational costs on the 1 Line went below Metro’s sometime in the early 2010s, so Link didn’t have to have a fare increase for a decade after that. Since then a lot of extensions have opened, which impacts the numbers, and some of them are lower-ridership like Lynnwood and Federal Way compared to the core, so that impacts Link’s net cost-efficiency. But it will get better over time.

      3. @Mike, I haven’t looked recently but the cost of running trains is/was astronomically higher than buses. It only pencils out when the trains are full which is very little of the time. The Link costs are cleverly concealed by reporting per car rather than per train. Sort of like dividing the cost of an artic bus by two. Four car trains are 4X more expensive than you’d think looking at the reported cost per hour.

  8. I think 24/7 service is much needed, but I’m not sure an airport/downtown express bus really is justified as planned, especially one that doesn’t even serve any population centers. Yes, you can transfer downtown but a 3 am transfer to an untimed hourly bus is not anyone’s idea of a good time.

    The easiest fix for this would be to just serve Capitol Hill, since a lot of people live (and socialize) there. Buses could probably still layover at the eastlake layover too. UW/U District would also be good to serve, but that’s a significantly larger investment $$ wise.

    1. just serve Capitol Hill, since a lot of people live (and socialize) there. Buses could probably still layover at the eastlake layover too. UW/U District would also be good to serve,

      I think you’re right. The other part I think is crucial is to serve the hospitals. Not so much for patients, they’ll take an ambulance, but for the workers. Night nurses for sure but cleaning and maintenance staff also need service when most of us are sleeping.

    2. Serving Capitol Hill overnight would also get some drunk drivers off the road. The area seems to have the city’s highest concentration of drinking establishments. Of course, there’s a similar scene in the U District.

  9. What a ridiculous number of redundant unnecessary stops. Who even designed this proposal?

    2. Are you gonna elaborate or just complain with no substance to your argument?

      Because the latter doesn’t exactly contribute anything to the conversation and leaves me scratching my head, considering that this proposal already skips about half of the stations.

  10. Also important to note that the RapidRide A line is due to get a nighttime frequency upgrade to every 30 minutes this fall as part of the south link connections. Currently between 2 and 5 am it’s about every hour.

  11. Here’s a proposal for timed bus service:

    There would be two timed transfer points. One would be located at 3rd/Madison for downtown routes. The other would be located at 15th/42nd (UW) for UW routes.

    All buses would arrive 5-10 minutes before departing, wait for transfers, and then continue. Most would terminate at the transfer point and continue as a new route.

    3rd/Madison would be the terminus for downtown routes, except for the C and G. Routes:
    – Half-hourly: 7-49, 36-70, Link, G (short-turn on 3rd)
    – Hourly: E-4, D-H, C

    15th/42nd would become the terminus for UW routes, except for the 49 and 70. Routes:
    – Half-hourly: 49, 70, 44-48
    – Hourly: 65-67

    1. Another potential transfer point would be at SeaTac. The A and Link shadow could stop there, allow for transfers, and turn around to head back in the other direction. There would be no need for either to continue and overlap service.

  12. concern: that the proposed idea would skip 1) roosevelt, 2) university hospital 3) cap hill. dense pop, high needs areas. the trains should stop at every stop.
    attention to :
    1) why is a train stopping for red lights??? passenger service used to be #1 green light track use. example- train from mt baker station south, down mlk.
    2) poor walking plan to reach station. example- the lights at alaska/mlk. five minute lights each direction, danger dick moves by drivers. oh look there goes your train.
    when i push the light i expect 15 second change- i am being rewarded for walking. i am not polluting in a car, all by myself. i am not made to wait for the machine.
    3) poor security -urine in elevators. everywhere.
    a) porous by design ticket areas, leading to fare escape artists.
    b) surfaces are to slick in rain- example mt baker station and columbia city station-both are cracking tile. fail.
    c) garbage cans not being there lead to trash everywhere. please stop.

    1. “concern: that the proposed idea would skip 1) roosevelt, 2) university hospital 3) cap hill. dense pop, high needs areas. the trains should stop at every stop.”

      It’s serving freeway stops like previous ST Express did. ST isn’t making it into a Link shuttle; it’s express service for the suburban subareas and where Metro doesn’t have night owl. There are tradeoffs with this, but it matches the typical mold of ST Express service.

      “why is a train stopping for red lights??? passenger service used to be #1 green light track use. example- train from mt baker station south, down mlk.”

      A few commentators have said some problem has apparently crept in with signal priority.

  13. My big problem is the underserved areas. It might not say it on this post, but the last post I saw was talking about reducing service on low-productivity peak-only routes. I think that’s absolutely abominable to put peak-only routes at top priority for reductions. If a route already only operates during peak hours, how dare they?! I’m more than concerned about Metro, I’m utterly terrified about what they are going to do!

  14. All these advances and pierce county gets screwed again. The last change was going to end in Fife. Not enough money to go to Tacoma dome.Should be pushed to DuPont. Sound Transit loves our tax money but pushes out dates in pierce county. Keep collecting our money that pierce county didn’t vote for.

  15. Based on the GTFS data, 570 night-owl service doesn’t run on Monday and Friday. Does that sound right??
    Since GTFS timetable use 30-hr timetable (they use 25:30 to represent 1:30 am, a typical practice for transit schedule that runs through midnight), I assume the Monday and Friday here actually mean Tuesday and Saturday morning.
    Very weird that it doesn’t run on these two days. It could be that the gtfs file is inaccurate.

    Also it is interesting that its headsign spells out the SeaTac Airport:

    570 Seattle Tacoma International Airport

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