2026 Trailhead Direct Routes

69 Replies to “2026 Trailhead Direct Routes”

1. I know this is from limitations in the Seattle TBD funding, but I wish that there were some way for the routes to start at South Bellevue in exchange for running until Labor Day weekend, and/or with some more routes. The south and east sides of Tiger Mountain, for instance, are still hard to get to by transit without a very long out-and-back hike.

   I also wish that Snohomish County could fund something similar for Community Transit – there’s so many hikes along Highways 2 and 20 that are just out of reach of normal transit, and have the same parking lot issues that started Trailhead Direct in King County.

2. If city of Seattle can own dam and reservoir far away from city limit, they sure should find a way to justify running a route outside city limits to help their residents. It is just dumb to pay redundant service just to have it reach the city limits.

   1. It should run from Issaquah TC if we’re being honest.

      Or really Seattle shouldn’t fund these. If we actually had good suburban transit coverage, SR 900 and North Bend should be having all day all weekend express bus transit anyways.

      1. Issaquah TC is too hard to get to on transit. It would be like another location that has been suggested, Eastgate P&R. You need a starting point that a good percent of the population can get to by a frequent one-seat express ride, short ride, or walk-up.

         South Bellevue has access from the entire Link network. It even makes sense to take a bus from Greenwood or mid Bellevue to Link to the shuttle. Downtown Seattle has transfers to everywhere. Capitol Hill is one of the core centers of the car-free hiking public and a popular transfer point for those who don’t live there, and the same shuttle also stops downtown so it gets all those transfers.

         Issaquah TC has only the half-hourly 554. You can get it from all the downtown Seattle transfers, but then you have a half-hour ride on it before you even get to the shuttle. If you wait 30 minutes for the 554 and 30 minutes for the shuttle, that’s 60 minutes of waiting. If you’re coming from the Eastside, your choices are so much worse that you might as well drive to Issaquah TC. It will get better when the future 556 starts, since you’ll have a frequent 1-seat ride from downtown Bellevue and a Link transfer at South Bellevue. But maybe still not enough for Trailhead Direct to start at Issaquah TC, because Trailhead Direct needs to be reasonably accessible from a large part of the county.

         Trailhead routes are borderline between special service and regular neighborhood service, so it’s not quite clear whether regular service should include the remote trailheads or it should be a special, specially-funded service. I’ve wondered why past Trailhead Direct routes served the High School Trail and Sunset Way trailhead when the regular 554 stops near them; shouldn’t it focus on trailheads that are miles away from regular routes? The route map should at least have highlighted that the 554 was another way to reach them if the shuttle didn’t fit your schedule or origin point.

         We should have comprehensive regular transit across the entire region. All suburbs including Issaquah should have full-time 15 minute service, including between Issaquah’s neighborhoods. When you get to rural edge towns like North Bend and Snoqualmie it’s debatable whether they should have 15-minute or 30-minute service, but at least 30-minute. And some trailheads have no houses or neighborhoods nearby so they’ll still need routes or extensions going specifically to the trailheads.

         But King County is light-years away from recognizing the need for real comprehensive transit and how transformative it would be, or taking incremental steps toward it, so we need to look at what’s the next incremental step we could persuade it to agree to. That’s the current Trailhead Direct, and nudging the county to offer it as regular transit service without taking hours from other regular routes.

      2. Running from Issaquah is no difference from running from some random parking lot as close to Mt Si as possible. There is a clear difference between 554-transfering Trailhead Direct route and Link transferring Trailhead Direct route.
         According to your logic, 101/102 should just run to TIBS.

         1. Running from Issaquah is no different than running from some random parking lot as close to Mt Si as possible.

            Yeah it is. You can get to the Issaquah TC from Seattle using transit. You can’t catch a bus to a random parking lot in North Bend. As it is, North Bend service is terrible. It will get a bit better with the next restructure, but it still won’t be that good on weekends. In contrast, the 554 is supposed to run from Downtown Bellevue to Issaquah every fifteen minutes on weekends. It seems like outbound trips could be timed (i. e. the bus waits at the transit center until the 554 arrives and everyone has had a chance to transfer). You couldn’t do that inbound but with buses running every fifteen minutes it isn’t the end of the world.

            I’m not saying that is the best option. If you are going to pinch pennies, then I would start at Eastgate. There are a lot more buses going to Eastgate. Not only the 554 but also the 215, 269 and 240.

            But even with that you are forcing (at least) two transfers for everyone from Seattle. I think it is better to just run it to Mercer Island or Downtown Bellevue. That costs a little bit more, but not a lot. The buses go pretty fast on the freeway, especially in the HOV lanes. Just to back up here, the mountains aren’t that close. Issaquah is still over 15 miles to North Bend. That section (along with getting to the actual trailhead) is what costs so much. Paying a tiny bit extra so folks from Seattle (and Bellevue) can better use this service without dealing with another transfer seems like it is worth it.

            But I get SKR’s point. If we had better suburban transit options then it would be easier to leverage them and provide additional trailhead service. But we don’t live in that world.

         2. Bellevue Downtown would be better terminus than South Bellevue or Eastgate. That would give transfers to future S1 and S2 for people from Renton, Burien, Kirkland, and Bothell. That would significantly increase the areas that have a 2-seat express ride to the trails. It would be a few minutes more from Seattle, but it would be on Link so not unpleasant.

         3. Well that’s my point. Everyone on here is mad about peak hour service and think it is low productivity (King County Metro says this themselves and is slashing all peak hour routes as part of their “South Link Connections” and permanently abandoning pre pandemic routes that were never restored), but looks like they really care about it in this scenario 👍

         4. I actually do agree with Bellevue Downtown. Or could even run it from the UW…

      3. Huh, but that doesn’t matter for peak hour commuters 🤔 why do Seattleites suddenly care about one seat, direct service instead of 3-4 transfers (but happy to let a county wide agency defund commuter routes to they can boost their 8 minute service to 5 minutes)… For a weekend trail service that gets far fewer riders? At least they’re funding it themselves.

         1. The reason service is suspended is the driver shortage from 2022. That is gradually being alleviated, and Metro expects to restore full service next year. The shift of hours from peak service off-peak service follows travel pattern changes. Not as many people are going to offices 9-5. They stopped in 2020 and haven’t come back. More people are going out at other times. Sometimes weekend ridership is even higher than weekdays.

         2. They came back in their cars because of the service cuts 🤦 not entirely back to normal, but a good deal of people are traveling in the weekdays… Whether to school or work. That’s not going to change. Remote work is slowing down with return to office mandates. Though people need to go to places other than Seattle… Like Bellevue, Factoria, Eastgate, Redmond, and Issaquah.

         3. I don’t see any indication of full service being restored by next year.

            Several routes are completely lost and some of them don’t even have local service to compensate.

            Maple Valley lost all their service except for a really bad DART route that is practically useless. East Hill Kent still has no service except Route 160 / Rapid Ride I (and no E-W or commuter route). Covington also lost direct service… the 168 is a slow route nobody wants to ride except people making short local trips.

            Up north, we lost the 167 with UW commuter service along 405. The 342 to Shoreline was deleted. The 556 is no longer going to the UW though it was a garbage route through Bellevue Way anyways, so Link is technically faster though the 556 should have always used 405 directly to Bellevue TC. And 257/311 (old 255) so Kirkland lost much of their direct service as well. No fast route to Bellevue either, except through freeway stations and P&Rs. UW Bothell service is limited and going to be messed up more now with Stride S2 skipping it.

            Only Issaquah somehow gets unusually exceptional service to Mercer Island. And I guess my area is lucky to somehow keep the 102… For now. Everyone else is losing out big time though. All the local bus routes here are empty except for select ones like the 105/160. Literally nobody in there except the homeless. Sad because we used to have excellent ridership and far more weekday trips for commuter routes… And that service should have expanded to the weekends.

            I get it being tough to run all these buses to Seattle but they can easily truncate them to Renton, Bellevue, or a Sounder/Link station.

         4. “I don’t see any indication of full service being restored by next year.”

            I think the so called “full service restoration” comes with a very big asterisk.
            With Link expanded so many miles since 2020, there are so many routes they can retire for good citing Link Expansion and past restructures. In the end, it was just bunch of Seattle routes Seattle wants to fund.

         5. Metro operator shortage to end next year.

            You can talk about specific routes that have gone in an open thread.

3. It’s ironic that we waited years for Crosslake Link to open and Trailhead Direct to be truncated at South Bellevue, only to realize that there’s a structural funding issue preventing it that had been there all along. Seattle is highly willing to put local-transit measures before voters and they’re highly willing to vote for them, but neither the county nor its voters are as keen to.

   1. In which case Seattle should take its ball and go home. The reaction should be the opposite of “starting in Bellevue is more efficient”: these routes shouldn’t serve Bellevue at all. Seattle pays, so Seattle gets. This is another instance of one of those regional issues where Seattle is the big dog and makes a play for regional comity and gets very little reciprocation for it’s efforts.

      It should also precipitate a totally different route design within city limits, to provide access to parts of town that do not have good access to the light rail system (generally west of 99/aurora).

      1. That was my original thought. I wrote as much elsewhere. If it is designed to benefit Seattle riders, then why stop at South Bellevue? Just start at the Mount Baker Transit Center (which is what the Issaquah Line does) and head straight to the mountains. To get to South Bellevue from Seattle requires taking Link. If you are going to do that, you might as well take Link to Mount Baker. (Riders at Judkins Park would just take the 7 and that is assuming it doesn’t stop along the way.)

         But then I realize that Seattle only pays for half. That changes everything. I suppose Seattle could pay for its own routes (that start at Mount Baker) while Metro and everyone else chips in for routes that start in Bellevue. But that would likely require work by the council anyway (since the council governs Seattle Transit Measure funding). They might as well amend the rules to omit Trailhead Direct funding from the 65% rule. That is, assuming Seattle helps pay for this at all. As Al wrote below, it isn’t clear why Seattle is paying such a high portion of this service.

      2. “it isn’t clear why Seattle is paying such a high portion of this service.”

         I’m sure the parks department doesn’t have much extra money, and Metro’s service hours are dedicated to other routes that would have to be reduced to divert them to Trailhead Direct. So without additional taxes or city funding, where would the money come from?

      3. “If it is designed to benefit Seattle riders, then why stop at South Bellevue? Just start at the Mount Baker Transit Center (which is what the Issaquah Line does) and head straight to the mountains.”

         It’s a question of travel time and out-of-the-way travel.

         Coming from, say, the U-district, taking the 2-line to South Bellevue is a faster trip than getting off the train in Capitol Hill for the same bus. But, taking Link to Mt. Baker would involve a lot of backtracking, and would be slower. Plus, the transfer itself – Mt. Baker Transit Center is separated from Link by a busy street and a long traffic light.

   2. I see the need to first have a larger philosophical debate: Should Trailhead Direct be funded by Seattle, KCM or the park agencies? The resulting routing and operation would seem to vary based on what the objective or objectives are.

      1. I could see the county, state or Sound Transit paying entirely for this service. The fact that the city pays for half of it (above and beyond what we pay the county) is unusual. But it probably isn’t that much money. I also don’t think it should change the routing. Riders from Seattle would benefit more from increased frequency and length of service than they would the trip across the lake (or within Seattle). This is just a case of legislation that needs to be updated (at the city level).

         1. I tend to feel that City-sponsored seasonal shuttles should first be focused on City parks or shorelines including coastal destinations like Alki or the Waterfront. I get that getting way away is a different recreational experience — but if the impetus is primatily to ease parking at the trailheads it shouldn’t require Seattle to contribute anything!

         2. if the impetus is primarily to ease parking at the trailheads it shouldn’t require Seattle to contribute anything!

            I agree. There are two goals here though. One is to fix the parking problem. The other is to give riders who don’t own a car a ride to the mountains. My guess is a lot of the people who use Trailhead Connect come from Seattle. That being said, I don’t think they shouldn’t pay a disproportionate amount. Seattle is part of King County so if Metro pays, Seattle pays. But it is also quite reasonable for Seattle to chip in simply because we like this route more (and are willing to pay more).

            It is like UW and Northgate Link. Seattle benefits a lot from it. But Snohomish County benefits from it as much as anyone. Otherwise, Lynnwood Link is useless. Thus it makes sense for Snohomish County to chip in and help pay for those projects. The same idea is true for this, even if the buses start in Bellevue. Seattle riders definitely benefit, even if the bus doesn’t actually reach Seattle.

      2. Right now it seems like it’s funded by all of the above. Although as stated 50% of that funding comes from Seattle.

   3. It’s based on “those who wants it, pays for it”. But it must stop at South Bellevue for transit best practices. You can’t just skip a large population center and the closest Link transfer/P&R to the shuttle. This isn’t a private charter service. Consider that a group of friends may be meeting to go to the trails together, some from Seattle, some from the Eastside, and some from South King County. If you make it difficult for those from the Eastside to get there because you’re too spiteful to have a South Bellevue stop, then you won’t have a complete group or those Eastsiders will drive, both of which are bad outcomes. We shouldn’t punish people because those politicians or neighbors are backward-looking. Bellevue can’t expect a shuttle to go out of its way to serve it, but when it’s just a tiny detour to serve South Bellevue station, it’s on the way.

      As for connecting western Seattle to the shuttle, that’s what the rest of Seattle’s transit network is for. If it takes a long time to get from some parts of Seattle to the U-District (although it doesn’t have a shuttle stop), Capitol Hill, downtown, or Mt Baker stations, then that’s a general problem with Seattle transit that affects far more than just people going to the trails, and it should have a general solution.

      For instance, people have often complained about how long it takes to get from Ballard or Fremont to Capitol Hill. So fix it.

      1. The Issaquah Alps shuttle ends at Mt Baker TC. It stops near Judkins Park but the eastbound stop is still a few blocks from the station. So stopping at South Bellevue is a much faster way to reach the bus from Link if coming from Downtown or North Seattle than going to Mt Baker or Judkins Park would be.

         Another factor is that there isn’t a stop at a free garage in Seattle. So any Seattlite that wants to drive to a Trailhead Direct bus has to go to South Bellevue in their car. Sure they could drive all the way but the trailheads can have parking issues.

         I guess Mercer Island could have been a good stop alternative to South Bellevue. But… well … that’s not happening.

4. I was baffled to see them not truncated at South Bellevue, so thank you for the explanation. I use Mount Si to get to North Bend for birding as it takes forever to get to North Bend with the current regular transit setup. That will change in the fall, though.

5. Switzerland has transit to its ski resorts and trails. Here’s a movie we had about transit in Zurich. It doesn’t address remote recreation but there’s a trail near a regular stop, and funiculars where they make sense for transit.

   Also, the tiny Austrian village with an U-Bahn to the ski resort.

   Both of these are examples of comprehensive transit, or “just do it”. Follow the world best practices, have frequent transit from everywhere to everywhere, put people’s mobility needs above car interests and reactionary skepticism, and don’t be afraid to use trains or gondolas or funiculars. If you can’t afford to do all of it now, at least have a plan, and milestones to get there, and don’t waste multibillion dollars in the meantime on a highway or a counterproductive DSTT2 that makes transfers worse.

   1. Colorado also has additional train called Winter Park Express from Denver to Winter Park during skiing season on top of Amtrak California Zephyr.
      They also have an intercity bus route that has stop across Rocky Mountain National Park, which is among the first NPS location that requires timed entry. Since Timed Entry is really a car thing, if you ride that bus to the park, you can get away with timed entry restriction.
      I think Mount Rainier is desperate to have something like that.

      1. I would also love to see shuttles to Paradise and Sunrise but I don’t see the NPS being in favor, they’d rather have fewer visitors. Notably, this year the white river entrance has been gated for a month since it melted out on its own.

         1. I think Rainier has a bit of a chicken and egg problem. Start with the national park. It is quite common to run shuttles through a national park. I’ve ridden them in Glacier, Zion, Bryce and Grand Canyon. They typically serve big parking lots at the edge of the park. That is an issue at Mount Rainier. They would need to build or leverage a big parking area. For Sunrise you might run a bus to Crystal Mountain. For Paradise I think you would have to create a new parking lot.

            Once you have that, you attract regional bus service. I could see this as a way to promote Crystal Mountain in the summer. It would also help businesses in Ashford (outside Paradise). Either way it would tend to be a long, one-way bus ride, which is expensive. I think it works for Colorado because the pass (and park) is on a major highway between towns and cities. I suppose you might have something similar at Sunrise (just keep going on 410). But Packwood is kind of small and as you keep going it just makes sense to go the other way. You could use this route to get to Yakima but I think going via I-90 is faster (and provided by Greyhound). Regardless, I think the first step is for the park to provide shuttle service — something they haven’t figured out yet.

   2. We had an article in 2018 about Utah’s ski transit and a proposal for King County and for Stevens Pass.

      In 2025 we had a movie about a Snoqualmie Pass Metro route. It would go from Issaquah to Cle Elum, possibly a variation of the North Bend route, and transfer to an existing Kittitas County route to Ellensburg.

      Why is it OK for a Snoqualmie Pass route to start in Issaquah, when Issaquah is too inconvenient for Trailhead Direct to the Cascade Foothills trails? Because Snoqualmie Pass is further away.

6. Truncating these routes at South Bellevue station could free funding for more frequent service or more routes, but SDOT has little incentive to fund routes that operate completely outside the City.

   I think the city council would have to pass a measure to allow this. Seattle Transit Measure has a requirement that all routes it funds needs at least 65% of their stops to be within city limits. You can see that here. But I haven’t found the specific legislation allocating money for Trailhead Direct. You would think there would be an exception for this particular service but apparently there isn’t. It falls under the same restriction. It is really up to the Seattle City Council to change things (if they want to).

   1. In the editors’ discussion on the article draft it was put forward that Seattle didn’t want to make an exception for Trailhead Direct because it would cause a “slippery slope”. I don’t know why that didn’t get into the article because it would answer the question of why Seattle is reluctant to. I guess it was because it was on a private TRU list and would require qualification, etc. I don’t know what exactly the slippery slope is referring to but I assume it would be other requests for routes to serve outside Seattle, although I don’t know what those would possibly be: where else do a lot of Seattlites want to go that’s outside the city and they don’t have good transit options to? I mean, I sometimes want to go to MMA matches in Arlington or Fife or to the SeaTac Botanical Gerden or the Soos Creek Trail, but I don’t expect tens of thousands of Seattlites want to go to there like the want to go to the mountain trails.

      But something similar came up when the issue of increasing the 120’s frequency came up, years before RapidRide H. The issue was that Seattle could pay for Seattle’s part of the route but it wouldn’t pay for Burien’s part. So either Burien would have to pay for that part or it would have to be short runs ending at White Center. In the end Burien agreed to pay for the rest of it, so frequency was doubled across the entire route.

      1. I’m not sure there has been any discussion at all, so the “slippery slope” argument probably never came up. It is just that the city council has other things to worry about and hasn’t addressed this.

   2. Both routes already violate the 65% rule though.

      1. I don’t think so. The rule applies to bus stops, not the amount of time it spends inside the city. While not on the map or the schedule, the Mount Si routes makes stops along the way. According to Google Maps, it stops on 15th & John, 12th & John, Broadway & John, Broadway & Denny, Madison & Boylston, Madison & Boren and 4th & Spring. That is 7 stops compared to the 4 outside. That puts it over the 65% limit. The other route is similar. I think in both cases Metro worked within the letter of the law to get the Seattle funding. Apparently this is easier than getting the city council to amend the statute.

         1. Even so, there’s still the question of whether a Seattle routing that duplicates Link is really optimal. For instance, they could have sent the bus to Mt. Baker, Queen Anne, or Ballard, and still followed the same law. The fact that it goes to Capitol Hill is just inertia, because that’s what the bus did before the 2-line existed.

         2. I would guess that the people who most ride to the trails are centered around Capitol Hill and the U-District areas, and secondarily the 45th corridor, and they can get to Capitol Hill station fairly easily. There’s even an outdoors-themed supply place or cafe something a couple blocks from the stop. I’d have to find it again to confirm what exactly it is.

         3. The fact that it goes to Capitol Hill is just inertia

            Of course it is inertia. The city council hasn’t changed the law. As a result, nothing has changed. The 2-line is irrelevant. It isn’t clear that Metro could come up with a better route, given the restrictions. The route is both urban and close to the freeway. This means that it serves a bunch of bus stops in Seattle but spends most of its time on I-90 (getting to the mountains).

            For instance, they could have sent the bus to Mt. Baker, Queen Anne, or Ballard, and still followed the same law.

            One of the routes already serves Mount Baker. So they actually accomplish some balance. Going to Queen Anne would take longer. Going to Ballard would take much longer. That would be moving the wrong direction. This is about as good as you are going to get, given the restrictions.

   3. I assume the map only shows time points, right? Because that’s definitely not 65% of stops in Seattle for Mount Si Trailhead Direct and perhaps the schedule time point stops are inaccurate. How can both direction of Mount Si route stop at Spring & 4th?
      If the stop percentage in Seattle is the requirement here, I think it is still possible for Mount Si route to meet the requirement while staying on eastside of I-5 before entering I-90. That covers more ground with no direct access to Link.

      1. I assume the map only shows time points, right?

         Correct. The map only shows the time points. Google Maps has the actual stops.

         How can both direction of Mount Si route stop at Spring & 4th?

         The stop there is confusing. But I think the bus basically does this: https://maps.app.goo.gl/LwDCnuyxLSxD2FV96 (before heading across the lake). On the way back it does this: https://maps.app.goo.gl/24iTHptcK4xPHPfWA. So it appears that it really does serve the stop at Spring & 4th both directions.

         If the stop percentage in Seattle is the requirement here, I think it is still possible for Mount Si route to meet the requirement while staying on eastside of I-5 before entering I-90.

         Yeah, sure. That’s what the other bus does. But it isn’t clear that it is better. The Mount Si bus serves Capitol Hill, First Hill and a stop downtown. That is a very dense area of coverage (for Seattle). After serving those stops (and just barely getting enough stops to meet the requirements) it gets right on the freeway. That is about as good as you are going to get (given the rules).

7. Assuming the routes didn’t cross the lake, I would actually start the lines in the Bellevue Transit Center. That gives a significant number of potential riders (living in the Downtown Bellevue area) a one-seat ride. It is also a major transit hub (e. g. folks from Totem Lake could transfer there). It would mean riders from Seattle would have to ride the train a bit longer but the bus would get right onto 405 from there. Thus you would spend about as much time on the bus as you would from South Bellevue (you would just spend a little extra time on the train). But if you decide to eat dinner or grab a beer before heading home, there are options in Downtown Bellevue (there is nothing in South Bellevue). The only drawback to Downtown Bellevue is the lack of parking.

   Another alternative would be stop at both Mercer Island and the Eastgate Freeway Station. The latter would be convenient for those who want to park in that part of Bellevue (and avoid driving to North Bend). As with Downtown Bellevue, there are places to eat in Mercer Island. For riders from Seattle it would be as fast as the transfer at South Bellevue. There would be fewer potential walk-up riders from Mercer Island but there would be some. You just don’t get the connectivity that exists with the Bellevue Transit Center.

   The second option looks better in every respect. The first option has some trade-offs. Either option would be considerably shorter than current service, which means they could have more trips. This would be better (overall) for Seattle riders than the current schedule and make up for lack of service in Seattle itself.

8. Excited for my first trailhead direct season as a Seattleite! Good transit access to parks and natural areas is sorely lacking in so much of the country, and I’m really glad Seattle invests in it. And for all the chatter about S Bellevue vs a Seattle start: I prefer Seattle, even accounting for the higher cost. S Bellevue isn’t that much less convenient in practice, but it certainly feels less convenient.

   And if we’re talking about consolidation for efficiency to run more service, I think it’s a lot more important to have more coverage than more frequency. There are so many hikes that require a car, and the ones that don’t require a ton of effort and planning. I’d prefer having more trail choice than marginally more frequent buses to a few trails, especially since I’m fine to plan a hike in advance

   1. I think the frequency serves two purposes: not just to make the service even more competitive with driving, but also for capacity. On nice days, it’s not uncommon for trips to be full, with even some standing. The buses are community vans so at best have something like 25 seats. There’s also a lot of cyclists that use the bike racks to avoid the trek along the I-90 trail.

      1. Yeah, that is one of the challenges. On nice days it is crowded. On rainy days very few people use it. But if it really is routinely crowded (to the point that they leave people at the bus stop) they should run bigger buses.

   2. Trailhead Direct has only existed for a few years. I think it started during the covid lockdown to give people access to the outdoors without cars. So it’s more that Seattle has started to invest in it. And it’s not just Seattle: shuttles from P&Rs to ballgames and special Sounder runs to ballgames expanded in the 2010s, and there’s now more of an expectation that large events will have transit access and limited on-site parking.

      And the ST Express network has been praised nationally for giving full-time access to and between suburban and outer-ring cities to an extent that most cities don’t have. Somebody from New Jersey even praised it, because even though they have more extensive Amtrak and PATH and New Jersey Transit and some express buses, it’s all legacy routes and it’s hard to get a new one started, whereas ST has been able to start and expand several routes in the past thirty years.

      So it’s gradually improving. It’s just way behind Europe or even Canada.

      1. I think it started during the covid lockdown

         It actually started before then. It was a pilot in 2017 and had more runs in 2018. https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/executive/governance-leadership/king-county-executive/news/archive/2018/november/27-trailhead-direct-results, https://www.wta.org/news/signpost/trailhead-direct-schedule-announced-for-2018

   3. I was surprised that Trailhead Direct started with half-hourly service, because the regular routes to or in areas like North Bend or the Snoqualmie Valley run every two hours, and that’s up from every four hours earlier. For a mountain hike it doesn’t matter as much if it comes every half hour or hour, because it’s still a major excursion, and you can hike an extra half hour at the end if the bus isn’t coming soon. But half-hourly service makes it much more convenient and makes more people willing to go. So it’s one of the transit successes we’ve had. And when I’ve ridden Trailhead Direct a few times, either going to the trails or when it happened to come when I was going from South Bellevue to Seattle before Link, there were a significant number of people on all the runs.

      1. For a mountain hike it doesn’t matter as much if it comes every half hour or hour, because it’s still a major excursion, and you can hike an extra half hour at the end if the bus isn’t coming soon.

         Not really. It can be a pain trying to time a bus while hiking. Most people don’t. They just show up at the trailhead and wait. If the trailhead is really pretty (like say, Hurricane Ridge) then it is no problem at all. A lot of people barely wander from the parking lot. But these trailheads aren’t as nice. Waiting 45 minutes wouldn’t ruin your day but it would be annoying and make driving a lot more attractive.

         1. It’s also a question of capacity. Even at half-hourly frequency, some morning trips routinely leave people behind because they are full. If the bus ran hourly, the service would be completely unusable. Even the current service is almost certainly losing riders to people who tried it once, couldn’t get on the bus, and gave up on ever taking it again.

   4. And if we’re talking about consolidation for efficiency to run more service, I think it’s a lot more important to have more coverage than more frequency.

      Fair enough. But I would rather cover the mountains then have the bus spend its time going from Capitol Hill to downtown to South Bellevue. I think there used to be service to Mailbox Peak. Personally I would love to see a bus serve Mailbox and keep going to the Middle Fork trailhead. I’ve hikes just about all of those trails and my favorite trips (by far) start there. I could see this being a separate (but timed) shuttle based on the other one (or vice versa). It could start at the North Bend Park and Ride.

      1. Yes, there was a Mailbox Peak stop. Not that I know what’s there besides the name on the map. I remembered it because of its unusual name.

         1. Yeah, they stopped serving Mailbox Peak for some reason. Mailbox peak is an unofficial name for a peak that sits above the confluence of the north and middle forks of the Snoqualmie River. There has been a very steep social trail (AKA climber’s trail) to the top for many years. Someone put a mailbox up there. People started calling the peak “Mailbox Peak” and it stuck. It was extremely popular despite being an extremely steep trail. The DNR decides to build a real trail up there. Here is a more extensive explanation: https://www.wta.org/go-hiking/hikes/mailbox-peak. You can see both the old and new trail on this map: https://caltopo.com/map.html#ll=47.46181,-121.64382&z=15&b=mbt (the old trail is a dotted line).

            I think the peak is still very popular which is why it is surprising they no longer serve it. I have hiked it but have no interest in doing it again. As I wrote above, I would much rather get a ride to the Middle Fork trailhead but that is a longer drive.

9. I think the state should fund bus routes along all our major state highways with ample hiking and scenery, and cut back on parking. Parking detracts from the natural beauty of the site.

   Add a P&R at the foot of the highway (along with other transit connections), and have them use a bus ($5 per parked vehicle, bus is free for all). There can still be parking at the site but maybe make it a $20/vehicle permit. The only people who’d still park might be someone who is doing a road trip and continuing to the other side (and don’t want to backtrack to the P&R) to get back their car. Good way to collect some money too, and they can scrap those “Discover Passes” in favor for these parking fees.

   Hwy 20 and US 2 are good candidates. I’m sure other shuttle services will be nice to have in other parts of the state as well.

   1. You seem to not understand that most of the trailheads in the Cascades or Olympics are not under state control – they are on federal land. Also, the vast majority are not reachable by heavy vehicles, and don’t offer a turnaround for large vehicles, even large vans. And every year the situation gets worse as more FS roads decay. Last December’s flooding is particularly problematic and we are only starting to see the damage as the snow melts. BTW, the snow level is still surprisingly low given the bust of a winter we had. I got stopped at 3200 feet twice two weekends ago in the Skykomish area while trying to get to trailheads at the 4k+ level.

      1. I got stopped at 3200 feet twice two weekends ago in the Skykomish area while trying to get to trailheads at the 4k+ level.

         Yeah, same thing happened to me (in the same area). I think everyone knows it was a drought year so we got overconfident and tried to do hikes that we usually reserve for late May and June. That happened to me on Tonga Ridge. We were still able to get to the top of Mount Sawyer but there was a lot more road walking than we wanted or expected.

         Anyway, back to transit. One thing worth mentioning is that they do charge for parking. In most trailheads you need a pass from the state parks (Discover Pass), National Park or Forest Service. People typically buy an annual pass but it still costs money.

         The biggest issue of transit to these areas is cost. The main reason trailhead access is so expensive is that there is so little to leverage. For example, consider the Snoqualmie Pass area. Imagine we had regional bus service from Seattle to Ellensburg with a stop at the pass. Imagine it ran every hour on weekends. This itself would be a big boon to PCT through-hikers (they wouldn’t have to hitchhike from the pass). It would also mean that day hikers trying to get to Kendall Katwalk would just start from the bus stop (adding only a tiny amount to their hike). So you’ve already added some value from a recreational standpoint.

         But it still isn’t a “hiker shuttle”. As it turns out, that wouldn’t be too hard though. You could easily run a bus up to Snow Lake (which is extremely popular). But there is no reason to stop there. You could go west to the Pratt Lake/Granite Mountain trailhead. After a side trip to the Annette Lake trailhead you could head back via Denny Creek. The loop would take less than an hour. This means it would leave as soon as the bus arrives from Seattle. It would then complete the loop and wait until the bus gets there from Ellensburg. Hikers would have to spend time waiting, but hopefully not that long. One hour frequency is not very good but the alternative for most people is a really long drive. More than anything, this would be fun. If the shuttle and the intercity bus served the sprawling Snoqualmie Pass area (which I could definitely see) then it would include Dru Bru — a great place to grab a beer and some food. You’ve served a half dozen really good trailheads that are very popular and even old, cynical hikers like me think that would be a fun outing. The shuttle wouldn’t cost that much. It is basically one bus and one driver per shift. This is much cheaper than even one of these routes (which have four buses going at once from what I can tell).

         But you need that service to Snoqualmie Pass first. That should be paid for by the state. Instead of chasing this crazy high speed rail notion, they should put money into implementing the 2006 plan for trains and running more intercity bus service. Then once they have that it makes sense to run shuttles.

         This goes back to the previous comment. At an abstract level, it really doesn’t make sense to run small buses from Seattle to North Bend. Just run the 215 every half hour on summer weekends. Then run a shuttle from North Bend. That means another transfer but it can easily be timed, at least from North Bend. Look at the loop for Mount Si. It doesn’t take long for the bus to get from the Mount Si Park and Ride (served by the future 215), serve all the trailheads and get back to the park and ride. It is all that time spent going from Seattle to Bellevue to North Bend. We have a regular bus that does that — might as well just take advantage of it. Then run shuttles from there.

      2. Oh, but just to be clear, it is unrealistic to serve all of trailheads with buses. There are just too many of them and a lot of them are really hard to access. I picked the particular loop because it is all paved and can be done in less than an hour. I would love to see a bus go to the Pratt Lake, Talapus Lake and Ira Spring trailheads (to enable more one way hikes). That would likely have to be a separate shuttle. Even then you aren’t serving all the trailheads in the area.

         It is also worth noting that at some trailheads they have experimented with additional fees to park (Artist Point) or reserved parking (at Mount Rainier and other National Parks). As SKR mentioned, the key is to have an alternative (which neither had). Several the National Parks do have shuttles within their park (and Zion also has a shuttle connecting it to the nearby town). But getting to those areas without a car is not trivial.

10. I guess I’m in the minority here, but I think it’s reasonable that these routes go to Seattle. I assume most of the passengers on these routes are coming from Seattle.

    If we were going to truncate them, Mercer Island, South Bellevue, Downtown Bellevue, or even Eastgate would work OK. Issaquah would not. It is not easy to get to Issaquah by bus.

    1. I think truncation is acceptable if the required connection to Seattle is Link, and only Link. This works only because Link is both very frequent, very reliable, and goes to many parts of the city, not just to downtown. If accessible the trailhead shuttle requires first taking Link, then another bus, then the trailhead bus, that’s too much.

       1. Yes. I believe that Link carries more daily riders than all of the RapidRide lines combined.

          It’s a bit trickier now that it’s branched into 1/2 Lines. Each probably has similar ridership (ST has not released April ridership yet). So should a route stop at each line (or at a station with both lines) or not?

11. One unfortunate issue with truncating the Trailhead Direct bus is capacity management. If the bus is truncated to South Bellevue, everyone is treated equally with regards to being able to get on the bus, whether they are from Seattle, Bellevue, Redmond, or somewhere else. But, if the bus is coming from Seattle, it is effectively giving Seattle residents priority for limited seats, under the assumption that backtracking to Seattle from the Eastside would be too far out of the way for people to be willing to do. So, one interpretation of the route is Seattle saying that, if they are paying for the service, their residents should get priority, and Eastsiders should be limited only to spaces on the bus which are not needed by Seattle residents.

    In actuality, though, I’m going to guess that the real answer is far simpler. I think the route was kept the same as past years for purely inertial reasons, and that the question of whether to truncate or not truncate the route was never even asked. In the past, there was a period where the Issquah Alps route *was*, in fact, truncated at Issaquah Transit Center, so precedent for a Trailhead Direct not serving Seattle does exist.

    For what it’s worth, ignoring capacity issues, I would argue that truncating the route does, in fact, serve Seattle residents better. For anyone already on Link, it is faster to stay on the train to South Bellevue, anyway. For someone in Capitol Hill, the extra Link connection doesn’t even really add time because the train travels through Cap Hill and downtown much faster than a bus does. But, the real benefit would be if the reduced travel time allows the same fleet of buses and drivers to run a few extra morning trips, avoiding the overcrowding to begin with, which I think is possible.

    1. the question of whether to truncate or not truncate the route was never even asked

       It was asked. Jason Li brought this up with the mayor. But it sounds like the city council are the people that need to make this happen. This slipped through the cracks.

       It is also worth noting that while Link is going across the lake, they haven’t implemented the bus changes yet. I think the best option in the long run is to just run the 215 every half hour during the summer weekends. Then run all the shuttle buses from North Bend (timed with the 215).

       The other shuttle (to Issaquah Alps) is a little trickier but I would lean towards the same thing. Once the road is fixed you want to do the loop as shown here: https://trailheaddirect.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/td_2024_issalps_brochure_en.pdf. I would start and end the loop at the Highlands Park and Ride since it has better transit service (like so: https://maps.app.goo.gl/8ZM3zb7rCuQnrLYJ7). Riders from Bellevue would take the 556 (and transfer at Issaquah Transit Center). Folks from Seattle would transfer at the Highlands using the 215, 269 (or even the 556 if they want a slower ride). Like North Bend you could time the outbound trip based on when the bus arrives while riders could expect to wait a little while (but not too long) going the other way.

12. The Issaquah Alps route was likely truncated because of the Fifteen Mile Creek Bridge replacement during 2026 that will block SE May Valley Road, but the choice to serve the Squak Mountain trailhead rather than any of the far more popular and interesting Tiger Mountain trailheads removes most of the value and interest of the entire line.

    1. The High School trailhead is still reachable with the 554. While the Poo Point Trailhead, itself, doesn’t have a bus alternative, you can hike the from high school trailhead to the same viewpoint. So, if the bridge is out, it makes sense for Trailhead Direct to focus on the Squak Mountain trailheads, which don’t have good bus alternatives.

       1. While Margaret’s Way is a destination hike, the May Valley trailhead is of interest mainly to locals. Using Newport Way to get from Margaret’s Way to the high school and East Sunset trailheads or up to the High Point trailhead would draw many more Seattle and Bellevue visitors.

13. Note on the weekend of May 30-31 , there will no 2 LINE service west of S. Bellevue. You will need to use the 550 bus to make a connection to the Trailhead shuttles at South Bellevue P&R/station

14. Haven’t thought about the details, but it would be great to have transit to some of the alpine lake trails in the Snoqualmie Pass area.

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