Over the past decade, Intercity Transit has worked on completely redesigning its bus network in Thurston County (Olympia, Lacey, Tumwater, and Yelm). Between 2016-2018, the agency solicited feedback on the priorities for future transit and received over 10,000 ideas from the public. Using these data, Intercity Transit devised three future scenarios and asked the public which path they prefer.
- Service Reductions
- Status Quo System
- Transformational System
Unsurprisingly, the transformational system was supported by 83% of survey respondents. The community preferred a redesigned system with:
- Earlier and later service on high capacity (arterial) roads and moderate capacity (collector) streets
- Service to new areas
- High-frequency corridor service similar to bus rapid transit (BRT)
- Enhanced commuter services
To help fund the redesigned network, voters approved Intercity Transit Proposition 1 in November 2018. The ballot measure also provided funding for a five-year zero-fare demonstration project. This went into effect on January 1, 2020, and was extended by three years due to the pandemic (until 2028).
Intercity Transit observed a change in ridership patterns after the pandemic. Transit ridership shifted from morning and afternoon peaks to more even ridership throughout the day. This dramatic shift paused the system redesign work and more community feedback was collected on post-pandemic travel behavior. The agency adjusted the redesigned bus network based on this feedback and the new network will launch on May 3, 2026. Key changes and unique components of the new system are discussed below.
Route 9X
On the map above, Route 9X stands out as the spine of Intercity Transit’s fixed route network. This BRT-like route offers frequent (every 15 min), limited-stop service between four key transit hubs: Capitol Mall Station, Olympia Transit Center, Lacey Transit Center, and Hawks Prairie. Every other fixed-route service connects to at least one of these stations. “The fundamental intent of the new 9X is to link together the four nodes with frequent service while supporting connections with other routes at common stops and transit centers.” Rob LaFontaine, Planning Deputy Director at Intercity Transit, told Seattle Transit Blog.
Between 2019-2022 and 2024-2026, Intercity Transit has operated a grant-supported demonstration BRT-like line called the One along Martin Way. The One has limited-stop service, but only runs on weekdays from 11am to 5pm. Intercity Transit has used the One to understand how such a route can serve the corridor as an alternative to a local route. Both the One and Route 9X have shadow local routes that run less frequently and have more stops.
LaFontaine added that Intercity Transit expects to adopt BRT-specific branding (similar to Swift or RapidRide) in the future for Route 9X and all new BRT routes.
Service Loops
Intercity Transit is introducing a few bi-directional loops that are served by one route in the clockwise-direction, and another route counter-clockwise. Examples of this include routes 20, 22 in downtown Olympia and routes 77, 78 in Hawks Prairie. Since loops don’t offer a clear inbound/outbound distinction, using different route numbers will help passengers quickly tell which direction a bus is running. This also allows Intercity Transit to end one of the loop routes earlier in the evening without much confusion. In the case of routes 20 and 22, Route 22 ends weekday service at 6:15pm, while Route 20 continues until 10pm.
One Seat Rides
The new Intercity Transit network takes more advantage of interlining bus routes, especially outside of the major transit centers. Interlining routes (when the same bus runs two routes back-to-back) offer one seat rides for more trips. This pattern is most noticeable with Route 9X and routes 34, 35 in west Olympia and routes 77, 78 in east Lacey. LaFontaine also highlighted interlining between routes 32 and 76 at the South Puget Sound Community College. This combination will offer direct trips for passengers traveling around, but not to, the College. Likewise, routes 15 and 16 which will be interlined together at the Washington State Labor and Industries stop in Tumwater. This route pair will finally provide a one seat ride between destinations on either side of I-5.
Final Thoughts
Near-complete redesigns of a transit network are not very common and it is exciting to see Intercity Transit take on the challenge. Of the agency’s 20 current routes, only four will remain untouched (13, 21, 600, and 610). The other 16 routes will be replaced by 25 new routes that serve an additional 130 stops. To support the new network, Intercity Transit is increasing the number of annual service hours by 14%. Intercity Transit will use community feedback and ridership data to adjust the network in the years to come.
King County Metro should take notes.
This looks like the kind of wholesale restructure based on frequent corridors that Jarrett Walker has done in many cities. I can’t think of any comparable example in Washington state. The closest is probably the Community Transit restructures with Lynnwood Link, and the future Swift lines.
Metro did do wholesale subarea restructures in the 2010s with RapidRide A-F, and to a lesser extent with Northgate and Lynnwood Link, and it has a Metro Connects vision, but its commitment to it seems to have lessened since 2020. And there have been questions about how much Metro Connects was designed by network experts vs a one-day public workshop (“charette”), and how much Metro is committed to these routes, since several restructures have come and gone without what would seem like low-hanging fruit from this.
I’m not as familiar with Washington’s other cities and towns. Spokane’s service has improved, with a RapidRide-like line and late evening service, but I’m not sure if it’s had a wholesale restructure. And while some Skagit and Island County routes look like the result of a restructure, I’m not sure if they were or if they’ve always been like that.
It’s important to understand the sheer amount of time it takes to plan these changes. They spent years on this redesign. This isn’t something that happens overnight.
King county metro does regularly change their routes to meet changing rider needs over time. This fall is going to.be a major example of that. The only areas not to see major changes this fall is going to be in the Seattle / shoreline corridor. But these areas HAVE seen significant changes these last several years.
This fall, South king county AND East county are going to see much needed changes to make the best use of the light rail.extensjins. these changes have been in the works for quite some time.
What’s best for one system may not be the best for others.
Other than deleted service and a few routes bumped in frequency, I don’t see much improvement in S King.
South Link Connections restructure in September. To me it seems like a major improvement for Federal Way, Auburn, Des Moines, and Kent.
Kent-KDM service increases on the 164 and combined 164/165 segment between 132nd (Lake Meridian), Kent Station, and KDM station.
KDM-Des Moines service increases on the new 166. I recently took Link to Federal Way and looked at doing a stopover on the way back, KDM+164 to the Des Moines waterfront. I gave up on it because the 164 is still hourly on Sundays, and there wouldn’t be enough time to get there before it got dark and I wouldn’t be able to see anything (which was the point of the trip). That corridor will increase to 30 minutes Sundays. That sounds like a major win for Des Moines.
Auburn-Federal Way: The 181 was going to get 15-minute service in an intermediate proposal but apparently lost it in the final. That’s unfortunate but I’m sure it will come when Metro has more resources. Metro has identified it as a RapidRide candidate.
There’s little change in Renton because this is a Federal Way Link restructure, and Renton is too far from Federal Way Link to be affected.
What exactly improved in Kent or Auburn?
I can see Federal Way has significant improvements and multiple buses.
Kent is left with just a 164 and Auburn just has a 181. A single east west bus route for two major cities? The 157/162 are gone, so no fast commuter service. The Sounder does not duplicate these services. The 162, yes, but not the 157. East Kent still has zero service except the 160 which is not E-W service.
So all Kent gets is a 166 which probably takes an hour to meander around the city before they can even transfer to Link or Sounder. Sounds like an improvement!
At minimum I’d hope to see a N-S service east of the 160 along the major roadway there.
As well as a new E-W service between Kent and Renton around the high schools that connects to Star Lake and Angle Lake.
Without at least those basic connections, a vast majority of people cannot use transit.
@SKR
Kent is getting much more span and frequency on the busiest parts of existing routes. Additional coverage would be nice but it wouldn’t drive ridership nearly as much as the additional frequency. It’s a major upgrade to their network.
The problem is that Metro’s planning has been too timid. The last time they made big changes was with UW Link, and that was a while ago. If you look at the routes since UW Link, they aren’t that different. Link and RapidRide G are essentially brand new additions and yet things are roughly the same. In several cases the violate Metro’s own service guidelines (which use common sense principles). For example, look at item 4 under Planning and Designing Service:
4. Route Spacing and Duplication
Routes should be designed to avoid competing for the same riders. In general, routes should be no closer than 1/2 mile. …
This is basic stuff and they do a good job of explaining the caveats. And yet the 10 and 12 clearly violate their own guidelines:
Routes are defined as duplicative in the following circumstances:
* Two or more parallel routes operate less than 1/2 mile apart for at least one mile…
* A rider can choose between multiple modes or routes connecting the same origin and destination at the same time of day.
This is exactly what the 10 and 12 do. So not only does the branch violate the spirit of the rule, it violates the letter as well. People in the area are stuck trying to choose between one or the other to go downtown. Oh, and each bus is very infrequent (running every 20 minutes at best)! At the very least these should branch at Thomas (that at least would get you under the somewhat arbitrary “one mile” distance). Yet even with the addition of the RapidRide G — a huge change for the area — they didn’t bother to do that. To top it all off, you have the 11 which also goes to the same area (downtown via Pike/Pine) running through the same area. If you are standing by Kaiser Permanente you have three buses you can choose from, all running every 20 minutes and all serving different bus stops. WTF?!!
That isn’t the only flaw in the area. The 2 is also very close to the G for over a mile. The tail of the 4 does go to a different destination but is otherwise quite similar to the 48 (which is quite similar to the tail of the 8). Then you have the 9 and 43 which perform poorly and are obviously not needed. All of these are legacy routes (or parts of routes) that make headways worse. Riders suffer as a result. Metro is just wasting service despite having every opportunity to change things in the area with the addition of the G Line.
The neighborhood isn’t alone. UW Link was a good restructure. But Northgate and Lynnwood Link have resulted in baby steps and have clearly flawed routing. Now with the addition of Pinehurst Station they are going to create a new route called the 77 which makes a hairpin turn, looping back on itself in a poor manner (thus violating item 5 — Route Directness). Meanwhile, the 75 (which itself is indirect) will get within about a 1/3 of a mile from the station and then turn away from it. Instead of being attracted to the station it appears to be afraid of serving it. All of this is much worse for riders. Again, this is because they are too afraid of changing the old 75 and would rather waste precious service hours on a new, poorly designed route.
Again, these are areas they’ve focused on. These are areas where a change could happen somewhat independently. Most of the system has had nothing, despite similar or worse flaws.
And yes, I know it takes a while to do a big restructure. Houston had one of the biggest restructures in the world — with about a year of planning and a year of public input (after the initial proposal). So sure, spend two years redoing everything. Or focus on different areas for a year. Hire consultants if you need them. But stop making itty-bitty changes and then claim that the area is now “done” because it clearly isn’t.
The benefit of hiring a consultant to help with a restructure is that they can propose more significant changes. They can base changes on performance measures more easily — and it protects the staff from being attacked in the future by a citizen, an advocacy group or an elected official. They can “blame” the consultants (with a wink) when someone grumbles.
The risk is that consultants may not be fully aware of localized issues around targeted services — like how blind people ride Route 50. Staff need to be giving feedback throughout the process to avoid major gaffes.
Considering Seattle’s radical densification since Link first opened in 2009 (1/3 more city residents) and the major new transit improvements like Link and RapidRide, it’s really seems time to revisit the Metro route structure in Seattle’s core. If things were stagnant like St Louis, a restructure can seem irrelevant because things don’t change quickly (except available operating subsidies). But our densification combined with significant transit systems investments make travel faster just say to me that it’s time for reevaluation.
This is only tangentially related to your comment, but I had the idea today after reading the bit about one way loops for Intercity Transit. What if the 10 and 12 ran as one way, live loops, in opposite directions using Thomas/19th/Galer/10th? This would allow a rider to always choose either the 10 or 12 for the entire length of their services at least coming from downtown, with the caveat that if you may have to go the long way around (at which point you could also walk if you prefer). It would also at least somewhat confusing, since inbound and outbound buses on each street would be mirrored. And you’d have to do away with the live loop downtown and find a layover spot near Pike/Pine in downtown which may be tricky too.
I think the issue of the 2 being too close to the G is a flaw with the G as it was envisioned. If it was instead about consolidating existing bus lines onto a BRT corridor (a good idea for Capitol Hill buses), it should have been built to allow any bus to serve it (i.e. side platforms on a center running way like Van Ness in San Francisco). I still like the G, but I would have liked it more if it also sped up the 2 and if BRT reliability could have been extended to more parts of Capitol Hill (even if I recognize the downsides of that)
“ The benefit of hiring a consultant to help with a restructure is that they can propose more significant changes.”
Jarrett Walker’s firm specializes on this and he probably thinks it is good marketing for him to publicize his firm’s work on comprehensive network restructure, so everybody knows consulting firm does that for transit agency. But really, every kind of service change has consultant involved at some level. Here public sector planners are unionized and are paid well (compared to private sector). Transit agencies are big enough and happy to keep more work in house. somewhere else in the country, transit agencies don’t even have people know how to do scheduling in-house. They outsource almost everything.
From some recent r/Olympia Reddit threads, there’s been some (understandable) grumbling about the loss of a one-seat ride to Downtown Olympia from the Division St. corridor in NW Olympia with the new Route 32, but overall, it’s shaping up to be a nice network redesign and expansion of service.
It’s worth noting that the Olympia/Lacey Amtrak Station will now involve one transfer (from Route 90 to the 9X), at Lacey TC, to reach Downtown Olympia, with another transfer at Olympia TC to reach the State Capitol via transit. In some cases, the Route 600/610 express buses between Olympia and Lakewood may be more convenient for reaching the State Capitol from Seattle via transit (if you can line up a good transfer to the ST Express 574/594 buses at S.R. 512 Park & Ride).
Amtrak has always been useless for going to Olympia. The station is in the middle of nowhere. (And since it’s the middle of nowhere, it has consequently always had poor bus service.)
Seems like a real missed opportunity to not run the 52 to the Amtrak station and end there. The 72 could be extended to take over the gaps moving the 52 would leave. This would bring frequent service from Lacey to Amtrak. And with the 52 being a short run of the 90, it would allow some flexibility in timing service to Amtrak trains without it having to impact service all the way to Yelm.
I like that almost all local routes have the same headway during the day.
It should be this way for this size of system for simplicity, although 600/610’s schedules are weird. The headway of each route or two routes are neither even if I didn’t read them wrong.
Frequent 9X as well as its branches are singled out. This 9X system reminds me of King County Metro Route 4. Both have complex service patterns but they choose different way to illustrate them.
Now if only they can run the 600 a bit more consistently. Ideally every half-hour seven days a week, but I’ll settle for hourly service (with 30 minute service during rush hour).
I agree Olympia – Lakewood is a corridor needing more service, but I think Intercity Transit (despite the name) is an awkward provider. Lots of the utility is a connection to Seattle, so I feel like Sound Transit is the natural service provider. But this kind of intra regional cooperation is always extremely difficult to do. Still, a version of the 594 to Olympia would be so nice
There was a pilot project funded by the state several years ago where the 592 was extended to the Olympia Transit Center. Ridership was minimal.
The Olympia Express service was shared with Pierce Transit up until 2012 or so. If memory serves, they had a route that bypassed 512 and went straight to TDS and Commerce. There were also a few trips from Olympia to Purdy and Gig Harbor via TCC.
The 592 pilot was AM northbound, PM southbound, so it was only useful to get from Olympia to Seattle and back in the same day. If you’re going the other way you’d have to stay overnight and come back early in the morning.
I’m not very familiar with Olympia but I really like all the interlined routes. Interlining done well can offer the best of both frequency and coverage: one seat rides for lower-demand corridors and high frequency for higher-demand ones.
I’d really like to see more of those in Seattle. There are quite a few corridors of almost-overlapping routes that would provide much more useful service with a bit of interlining.
I lived in Olympia for two stretches: from 1995 to 1997, and from 2005 to 2007. The current map is almost identical to my memories of 1995, despite the area almost doubling in population since that time. Unfortunately, almost all of that population increase is exurban sprawl. Olympia’s land use is quite atrocious. I distinctly remember trying to find a place to live downtown in 2005, and there were literally no options that I could find.
The new map looks good. Division is losing a one-seat to downtown, but let’s be honest: there is nothing on Division until you get to Harrison.