Three videos by J-Man Explores.
Riding all the Community Transit Swift lines in one day, with the history of each transit corridor. Swift is the limited-stop BRT in Snohomish County, 13-30 miles north of Seattle, serving Lynnwood and Everett and surrounding cities. Transfers from Link light rail are at Shoreline North/185th station and Lynnwood City Center station.
Seattle to Olympia and back with no backtracking. Southbound is via the Bainbridge ferry and rural bus routes in the west sound. Northbound is the usual way via I-5 express routes. (Olympia is 60 miles south of Seattle, the state capital and a small city. Tacoma is in between.)
Circumnavigating the Admirality Inlet. Where is Admirality Inlet? It’s on the west side of Whidbey Island between roughly Freeland and the Port Townsend-Coupeville ferry, and the corresponding east side of the Olympic Penninsula. In a 5-hour layover in Port Townsend he explores the town, an extra Jefferson Transit route and wooded trails, and meets deer.
The J-Man Explores channel also has many shorts ranking various transit routes.
We have a Transit to World Cup Events guide, and a Seattle for Visitors transit guide.
This is an open thread.
Im wondering if anyone here knows why the 2nd downtown tunnel will be serving Denny/SLU instead of belltown?
Looking at the routing to Ballard to me it would make more sense to go to Belltown and save SLU/Denny for a freemont/aurora line.
Most of the early proposals actually had Belltown: https://seattletransitblog.com/2013/12/06/sound-transit-refines-ballard-options/. But then, for some reason they decided to go the other way. My guess is that it was pressure from Amazon (they wanted Link). Once they decided they were going that way they stuck with that route despite the high cost. I think that is one of the many flaws with the planning process. They decide too early on a route without knowing what it will actually cost. It would be much better to look at a lot more options (including Belltown) as that might be a lot cheaper.
The same thing is true for serving Ballard itself. Very early on there was talk of crossing the ship canal to the west. This would have the advantage of orienting the trains east-west in Ballard (see Option A). Not only could this result in a better station in Ballard but it would be much easier at that point to extend it to the UW. But this option was ruled out because the city council member who represented Ballard at the time just didn’t like it. So they stopped looking at it and eventually considered things like putting a station at 14th. This is creative, but much worse.
Although Belltown would have been more direct, I think SLU is the right choice. Belltown is currently better served by buses, it is now less dense than the area around Denny/Westlake, and I think a significant fraction of Belltowners are residents who already walk/bike/bus to jobs nearby. In contrast, Denny (and Mercer) are car dominated traffic nightmares because the majority of people are workers commuting from far away.
Wasn’t the SLU station cut? IIRC it’s just gonna be a Denny station now
https://bsky.app/profile/typewriteralley.bsky.social/post/3mo442o5lcc2e
Yeah, the idea is apparently the streetcar is good enough for SLU.
With the monorail serving Seattle Center and the E serving Aurora, I’m not sure what the purpose would be of a line truncated at Seattle Center, like they’re planning.
“Wasn’t the SLU station cut? IIRC it’s just gonna be a Denny station now”
Yes, but part of SLU is still in the station cachement area.
“the idea is apparently the streetcar is good enough for SLU.”
No, the idea is to bring the Ballard/DSTT2 cost down without making changes the board wants even less. Nobody thought a station in “real SLU” wasn’t important; ST just had to make tradeoffs to make the cost affordable. I doubt anyone involved thought for even one second that the streetcar was an adequate substitute for Link. Instead the heavy lifting is being done by RapidRide C and future RapidRides I/80 and 40, and the agencies could also add an H extension when they think of it.
Which Ballard council member? There is at least one news report where Mike O’Brien (the Ballard rep before Strauss) proposed making a Ballard to UW line (and a West Seattle to SoDo line) as a possible way to save costs. Kubly is the one who suggested the two tunnel/ SLU line in the SDOT proposal without any public comment. (and the whole ID kerfuffle). Some of us kept begging in open threads for STB to reach out to Kubly (since the previous STB leadership were tight with him) so we could pick his brain on what he was going to propose.
The SLU/Big Tech thing was never in any ST proposal.– it was a Kubly creation (spurred on by Big Tech).
DSTT2 goes back further than that. In December 2015 there were two candidate projects: one with DSTT2 and the other to upgrade DSTT1 for three lines. That was also when the split spine concept was first introduced, to route Tacoma to Ballard and Everett to West Seattle instead of Tacoma to Everett. The plans up to then were based on a Ballard-DSTT2-West Seattle line.
ST then proposed an ST3 system plan with Ballard-Tacoma in DSTT2, sometime between January and April. In the public comment period for this, SDOT wrote a letter asking for Ballard to be rerouted to SLU. ST then did.
Because SDOT asked ST to reroute it from Belltown to SLU in early 2016. Everyone dropped the ball on South Lake Union and didn’t anticipate that new highrises would need high-capacity transit. Both ST, Seattle, and transit fans are at fault there.
The monorail was going to be on 2nd Avenue from Seattle Center to Pioneer Square. Then it was switched to 5th Avenue south of Stewart Street because 2nd Avenue businesses objected to having passengers looking in the 3rd floor windows and the stanchions displacing street parking. Apparently the 2nd Avenue businesses are more influential than the 5th Avenue businesses. The monorail project later failed. When Ballard Link was in early planning, it inherited the presumed corridor. But in early 2016 (sometime between January and April, I forget exactly when), SDOT asked ST to reroute it to SLU/Denny Triangle, and the majority of stakeholders agreed, so ST did.
This is of course leaving Belltown out again and again. The early plans for DSTT1 went from CID to Seattle Center, which would have served Belltown. (This is in the 1975 video in the June 7 Sunday Movie.) But it was ultimately routed to Convention Place, leaving out Belltown. And now Link disses Belltown too. A parallel to how it disses First Hill.
Thanks for the reminder of the history. When the process is decades long, it’s easy to forget ideas/plans/promises from years ago. Case in point, back in 2018, I recall there was a push to try to move the Mid-Town Station up to First Hill, in part to reduce the walkshed duplication with the 3rd Avenue stations. The advisory committee recommended eliminating this option for further study fairly early in the process, but I thought they also recommended some sort of consolation investment to improve transit access up and down that steep hill (though I can’t remember what that was). Fast forward five years to 2023 and that consolation investment was long forgotten, and to add insult to injury, the Board actually eliminated the midtown station at Madison entirely (along with its connection to Rapid Ride G), at least as their preferred option. Again, I thought they gave some assurances that this cut would be mitigated somehow, but it’s already been a few years, and my memory is fading…
“When the process is decades long, it’s easy to forget ideas/plans/promises from years ago.”
The editors have been pondering some articles on the issues 10-20 years ago, because so many people are always coming to the region after that. We’re also thinking about articles like What is RapidRide, Intro to ST3, When should bus routes be truncated at Link stations? And I’ve got a couple ideas of my own for STB’s 20th anniversary next year.
Thanks to Mike for featuring local videos! I like that he actually gets out there and rides the transit he makes videos about.
J-Man Explores had been recommended by two different people. I wanted something upbeat and positive for the World Cup season: I don’t want to lambaste Pugetopolis transit and land use when there are World Cup visitors; there’s enough of that in the archive and visitors can’t do anything about the issues. The “every Swift line” video had been on the list for a while, and when I looked at the rest of the videos, there were only two of them, and they’re both rural transit trips, of interest to the regular readership and perhaps of interest to visitors to know that these areas and routes exist. So it became our first “whole channel, and all of the channel” day. Perhaps that might be a potential model going forward, although I’m not sure, and in any case most channels have dozens of videos and that’s too much for one day, and with some channels we’ll be dipping into them repeatedly.
Holy heck! It’s me!
Thank you so much for the feature, Mike! It’s an honor after being a looooooonng time lurker on here. I’m sometimes obnoxiously positive, but I try to keep it real. :)
We are pretty blessed here to have good enough transit systems to make things like this possible. Thanks for the support!
Hi, J-Man Explores! Mike has also featured me on a post one time. I also use the blog by the way, and you must know me since I comment on your videos.
Some other video ideas could be the RapidRide lines, Pierce Transit one-digit routes, Everett Transit and some of its routes, transit in Marysville in preparation for Swift Gold, the Swift Green extension area between Canyon Park and UW Bothell, the Snoqualmie Valley shuttle, Vashon Island transit.
I spent weekends on Vashon in the 70s, although I’ve only seen it by car, except twice when asdf2 led a group to the annual Strawberry festival and some woods at the southwest edge of the center. There’s a particularly beautiful view of a narrow strip of land with a sand dune connecting Vashon and Maury Islands. I can’t find it in Google Maps but it’s somewhere south of the center, around Quartermaster Harbor, Portage, and Burton.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/fvvjcesdfoLuituFA?g_st=ac
Portage way?
Maybe. The street view images just don’t look like what I remember. There should be a sandbar with little more than a road on it and water on both sides, all wide open. Not these mini forests. There are forests around, but not right there. I don’t remember if you can see it from the Vashon Highway — the all-day bus route — or if you can only see it after going a way toward to Maury Island. I usually went to Maury or Burton: I think the only time I’ve been south of Burton was the first time we went to the island and we took the ferry to Tacoma, when my dad was exploring the whole island to buy a house there.
Can anyone explain the naming convention for rapidride routes? Obviously R is for Rainier, but are any others named particularly? B for Bellevue? K for Kirkland? Or are those just coincidence? Why would some get named for their route and others be named arbitrarily? Why don’t we have A for Aurora?
Coincidence, KC Metro has been mostly going alphabetical for each new RapidRide line they open. The Route 7 RapidRide is the outlier as they jumped to R for it
Mnemonic:
federAl wAy
Bellevue
west C-attle
ballarD
Eurora or aurorE
why the F*ck is this the second RapidRide in South King County?
maGison
deHlridge
kInt
Jeastlake
Kirkland
Rainier
The initial levy was for lines A-F. Their order of opening was based on a kind of subarea equity for the subareas/cities served. The G-J followed in the order their projects were started. Then subsequent things happened to change the order. The G was led by SDOT and took a year to get a project director and up to speed, and I think there were other delay issues I don’t remember. The H got to the front of the line because Seattle wanted that for equity and Metro also sees Burien/White Center as an equity area. Was that a covid-era decision or a 2018s-era decision? I don’t remember.
It was only with the R and K that Metro accepted the idea of lettering them based on their corridors or cities. The R may have been the catalyst, because transit fans kept saying that it would be a pity to not name the Rainier Avenue/Rainier Valley route “R” when those were the overwhelmingly dominant aspects of the district and corridor.
Second video set me off researching how much rural/intercity transit coverage there are in Western Washington, but many of them lack clear information and cranky GTFS information. That’s definitely something with room to improvement from help in state level. If state is not yet at a good spot to fund intercity/rural service, they should at least support digitalization of transit info. It will be cheaper to do it for all of them than each agency pays for a vendor to do it for their own small network
I believe all counties in WA offer at least some fixed route transit, though it’s often pretty nominal (and no promises in Eastern WA). I know that you can technically circumnavigate the Olympic Peninsula on local buses, though I have no idea if it’s practical. You’d almost certainly need to stop over in Forks, and the connection down Hood Canal looks rough.
Most (if not all) of the funding for the county-level transit systems comes from the state, especially after the CCA. I know Oregon has a consolidated state-level GTFS page, not sure about Washington. Ultimately, rural transit route planning is usually a pretty manual experience in any case. There’s often 5 or fewer trips per day even on the trunk routes. Cost savings may be there, but there’s also companies that specialize in rural transit GTFS services. Not really sure what the magnitude of costs is for that, but I suspect it’s small.
The only county in Washington that I’ve found not offering fixed route transit is San Juan.
The bus that does operate there is a private company chartered under a tour permit than a transit permit.
Yeah the continental part of western Washington has good coverage just to look at where fixed route service is going, not to say there is also a layer of tribal agencies which tights some loose end on top of country service.
And Kitsap Transit doesn’t have schematic maps of all its routes, or the part of the route outside downtown Bremerton or Winslow. And a few very small agencies don’t have route maps at all, so that outsiders can’t even begin to comprehend where X Street or Village Y is because they’re not on the regular maps at any useful zoom level, is or whether there are any towns or shopping centers or institutions on the rest of the route. Things you’d need to know to figure out where these routes go, how these nodes relate to each other geographically, or what to do if they want to get to something in the service area. Long-time residents already know Moose Falls with two stores is on Sasquatch Road near the big bend where the L-shaped tree is, but nobody else does.
I got a taste of what you describe when I browsed Kitsap Transit’s info, but I have to say many smaller agencies do worse job than KT.
Most notably Grays Harbor Transit’s service information are very confusing. Of course some of their loop routes are not easy to illustrate, but they clearly don’t think hard enough whether their information is really comprehensible.
Some other agencies don’t even have schematics for any of their fixed-route service.
I can concur on Grays Harbor Transit. It is not the easiest system to figure out.
“I believe all counties in WA offer at least some fixed route transit”
It has gotten much better compared to ten, twenty, or thirty years ago. Back then I think many of these agencies and routes didn’t exist, or had a shorter span and even less frequency. When I went to Oregon and California on road trips growing up in the 80s, at the gas stations I’d pick up any local bus-route brochures or TV Guides I could find (the two things I collected). Centralia & Chehalis had an agency called Twin Transit with two routes. Now Lewis County Transit has a network of 9 routes, and 4 of them mention Centralia and/or Chehalis. The state has stepped up with support for rural county agencies and inter-county expresses. I’m still surprised how much transit they have now, even though it’s still very minimal and skeletal. I keep being surprised at J-Man or Glenn in Portland or AdamDoesNotExist my friend in north Lynnwood can put together these viable rural trips to so many places.
My own rural trip is the Snoqualmie Valley, which I’ve done twice. 554 to Issaquah, 208 to Snoqualmie (every 1.5-2 hours), Valley Shuttle to Duvall, 224 to Redmond, 545 to Seattle (now Link). The Valley Shuttle runs every 1-2 hours, and there’s one time in the morning around 10:30 when the transfer from the 208 to the shuttle is short (10 minutes), so I based my trip on that.
In the fall it will be Link to Mercer Island, 215 to Snoqualmie (every 90 minutes), Valley Shuttle to Duvall, 224 to Redmond, Link to Seattle.
Dang, I hate how the 215 will run every 1.5 hours to North Bend. At least it’s half of what we have to deal with now on the 208.
Well at least the 215 is being born again! It makes sense why they decided to restore it though with a truncation in Mercer Island. It would be a big pain going to Seattle from the Snoqualmie Valley knowing that an extra seat would be added to your ride so… Why not just run a route from light rail to the Snoqualmie Valley to not add an extra seat?
I wish the 554 could be kept but going to Bellevue like how Sound Transit originally proposed. That way we had a chance of having the Sammamish tail on the 554 become all-day so that riders don’t have to deal with a 3 seat ride. I don’t like how the 269 abandons Issaquah TC and stretches all the way to Mercer Island like… What!?
That would have saved Metro some service hours by cancelling the 269 (which runs half hourly on weekdays and no weekend service even though it’s supposed to serve a city of 65K residents).
Though if the 554 were to do that, it would become a weird and long U-shaped route from Bellevue TC to Marymoor Village Station.
“ I wish the 554 could be kept but going to Bellevue like how Sound Transit originally proposed. That way we had a chance of having the Sammamish tail on the 554”
I feel like regardlessly they would drop Sammamish tail from 554 when they sent the ST express to Bellevue TC since 269 will run more frequently.
All they’ve changed from that version of the plan to the final approved plan is just the name of the route.
Why not just run a route from light rail to the Snoqualmie Valley to not add an extra seat?
You mean combine the Valley Shuttle with the 215? That might work. The schedules are fairly similar. I see some issues though. The Valley Shuttle is essentially free, although they suggest a $1 donation. It is mostly fixed route. But it can deviate from the main route if folks ask for it. They run vans, while the 215 will presumably be a regular sized bus. This might be an issue when it comes to the deviation. Then there is the length of the route. It might be too long. I could see it happening, just as DART has evolved to offer what is essentially regular fixed route service.
The Valley Shuttle serves North Bend. You can’t combine the 215 and the entire shuttle without leaving out North Bend or backtracking. But North Bend is apparently its highest-ridership area and it’s operated by a senior center in North Bend.
90% of the passengers on the Valley Shuttle don’t transfer to other routes, at least midday. I’m the only one who transfers to the shuttle northbound in Snoqualmie, and at the other end only 2 or 3 transfer in Duvall, out of 20+ total passengers. People use it for errands within the Snoqualmie Valley.
“90% of the passengers on the Valley Shuttle don’t transfer to other routes, at least midday.”
Sure, but if the bus is designed with a route and schedule that is only really usable for people who aren’t transferring, then course, a large majority of riders won’t be transferring. But, that doesn’t mean that the trips that would require transfers don’t exist, it just means that people making them are avoiding the bus because the bus sucks too much.
Presumably, anyone with access to a car would not be riding a route like SVT anywhere, to begin with, but even for people without, there usually are alternatives, though they may be very expensive or painful. For example, paying $100 for an Uber ride. Or, asking an adult child who lives in Seattle to drive out to Duvall to take them to something going on in Bellevue.
But, I don’t find it plausible the argument that people who live in the Snoqualmie Valley only ever need to travel within the valley, and don’t need to connect to the broader region.
I’ve had this fantasy where Metro would extend both the 224 and the 208 (or I guess the 215 soon) to Carnation, and run both 7 days a week. Then there would be service to both Redmond and Issaquah for the Valley area, which is clearly growing rapidly with inadequate transit service currently.
Remlinger Farm is at least intermittently an off-peak attraction and really could use more transit than the SVT shuttle can provide now. That’s nothing against the shuttle – I’ve come to love it as an option to come back from biking the Snoqualmie Valley Trail.
The Valley Shuttle is such a great little service. It is such a great ride. I need to check out the route to Monroe soon.
Also, thanks for the video ideas! Vashon Island is stunning. I rode the 118 and that might be KCM’s most scenic route. If you want a slow way to Tacoma, pairing it with the water taxi, the WSF Tahlequah Ferry, and PT Route 11 makes for a great morning.
The valley shuttle would be more useful if it connected to something that ran more often that every hour and a half, for onward travel into the core city. The problem is, there is no way to do that without massively increasing the SVT’s own service cost.
Having the connection to the 208 in Snoqualmie well-timed in both directions would at least help somewhat, though I’m not sure if they bother to do that, or whether it’s even possible if the SVT allows people to request off-route deviations.
I’ve been wanting to see Snohomish and Monroe beyond the few glimpses in a car I’ve had. Once I went to Everett to transfer to CT 271, but the bus had just left and I didn’t want to wait 50 minutes after already traveling for an hour, so I walked around downtown Everett instead.
Speaking of 271, a couple weeks ago when I drove back from Leavenworth on a Monday afternoon, there is pretty noticeable backup on US 2 between Monroe and Gold Bar in the afternoon going westbound. I can see people taking that route if they work in Downtown Everett.
The backup is actually a huge problem for route 271. It gets zero priority, and just has to sit in line with all the cars, no matter how long it takes. It also makes arrival times unpredictable for people getting on the later in Monroe or Snohomish.
A part of me feels like the bus should just truncate in Monroe, which not only avoids the traffic, but also allows Monroe-Snohomish-Everett service to run more frequently. The problem is, that would leave Sultan and Gold Bar with no service at all, without an additional route, at additional cost.
So the 215 will increase service to Snoqualmie and North Bend? If so, that is great news! Those two communities aren’t particularly well connected to Issaquah and points west at the moment. They are also not well connected to points south (down SR 18). It would be great if service between the Snoqualmie area, Covington, Auburn, and Federal Way could be launched.
A BRT from Issaquah to Auburn via SR 18 would be amazing. I also think a Green River College to Issaquah via Renton Highlands would be good as well
The 215 will be an express every 30 minutes from Mercer Island station to the Issaquah Highlands P&R (bypassing central Issaquah), and every third trip will continue to Snoqualmie and North Bend. Here’s the entire East Link Connections restructure. The last phase will be implemented this fall.
That begs me question again what difference 218 has from 2 out of 3 215 trips to Issaquah Highlands that made Metro decide not to combine 218 with 215?
People have wondered that. I guess Metro doesn’t want to confuse people who are used to number 218 being a pea relief route, meaning it’s only there to avoid crowding. I don’t know why Metro thinks it’s not confusing to have the 215 do such very different things. It just doesn’t seem to like the look of:
12:00 215 Issaquah Highlands / North Bend
12: 15 269 Issaquah Highlands / Sammamish
12:30 218 Issaquah Highlands
12:45 269 Issaquah Highlands / Sammamish
01:00 218 Issaquah Highlands
01:15 269 Issaquah Highlands / Sammamish
01:30 215 Issaquah Highlands / North Bend
01:45 269 Issaquah Highlands / Sammamish
02:00 218 Issaquah Highlands
Somehow calling those short off-peak runs 215 is better than 216 or 218. Maybe you need special Metro glasses to see why.
East Link connections is a clear downgrade of service. Comparing the old and new route map, you can see several closed bus stops and very few new ones added.
The number of bus stops isn’t the only factor. Service is more frequent in several corridors, and that makes using transit more viable.
Reliable for those who can get to the stops.
Transit agencies inevitably have to make tradeoffs between one route/frequency that serves one set of people, vs another route/frequency that serves another set of people. They have to choose the one that serves more people, a wider cross-section of demographics/trips, improves equity, etc. Saying a route should go from downtown Seattle to Issaquah, Snoqualmie, and the Snoqualmie Valley serves one set of people/trips, but it’s mutually incompatible with another concept that would serve another set of people/trips. Not everybody in the Snoqualmie Valley is going to Seattle, and maybe that route is leaving out some Snoqualmie Valley residents/trips. It’s Metro’s job to calculate all that and determine the best tradeoffs.
What we see in the East Link restructure is Metro responding to a decades-long demand for (A) more frequency from Issaquah to the region, (B) more frequency to North Bend, and (C) all-day Issaquah-Bellevue express service (provided by future ST 556). The restructure does all that. It may seem like overkill for Issaquah, or disproportionate to South King County’s needs, but it’s still a major milestone achieved. We need Metro to achieve more of these major milestones — and ideally all of them in all areas. The way to get there is incremental improvements in one area at a time, like this Eastside restructure is, not to cancel it to divert the hours to Renton or Kent or continue all inherited one-seat rides and bus stops forever.
The East Link restructure is a huge improvement. The bus stop in front of my house was eliminated, so I have to walk a few blocks, but the frequency and span of service are much better than before.
Metro’s match day shuttle is already falling apart. Extreme delays and very few buses showing up. Think it’ll get sorted out soon … But not the best look for tourist perception.
Example?
I checked Pantograph around the same time South King Resident made the comment.
He was probably referring to the fact that two out of 3 active trips around that time were 10+ minute behind the schedule put in Metro’s GTFS data. Last time I checked, Metro didn’t really publish Match Day Shuttle’s schedule besides releasing a GTFS dataset with the service in it. so probably no operator is trying to match time point. That could be why it seems way off compared to its GTFS schedule.
It is just like how they run Link Shuttle. They just keep running, which is probably the right thing to do for this kind of service.
Metro Match Day Shuttle Seattle Stadium – Seattle Center
126 / 304 (41%) 178 missed
The last morning trip of 908 scheduled to arrive Bellevue TC at 9:11 arrived at 8:53 am. Not sure from which point the trip started beating the schedule.
When that bus approached Bellevue TC at 110th NE intersection before entering the transit center, it mistakenly used the left turn lane to enter the TC and almost hit the 532 next to it using the through lane to enter the same lane at the same time.
I’m guessing the schedule has a lot of traffic padding. When traffic is light, the bus will arrive early.
IMO, the schedule should always be faster when it comes to these low frequency commuter routes. Let the buses be “late” rather than early. It’s annoying for a bus to blow past a stop 10 mins early… people following the schedule would prefer having to wait 10 mins rather than missing the bus and possibly waiting even longer for the next bus.
I am not sure if 20 minutes early is even possible for this route on a better day if the schedule was done correctly.
I-405 Bellevue-to-Lynnwood section has been consistently good or bad depending who you ask, if the early trip is due to light traffic at SR 522 between Monroe and Woodinville, shouldn’t the bus wait at time point?
“if the early trip is due to light traffic at SR 522 between Monroe and Woodinville, shouldn’t the bus wait at time point?”
Waiting would not make sense, given that Snohomish County is paying for the bus, and the only people that could possibly benefit from such a wait are in King County, not Snohomish County.
Route 256 has regularly ran 20+ mins early on some days.
“Route 256 has regularly ran 20+ mins early on some days.”
You need to distinguish between regular stops and timepoints, and the ones on the destination side of a peak express route (which are usaully marked with a dagger in schedules). For regular timepoints, Metro has a rule not to be more than 2 minutes early, so a bus will stop and wait at that stop or the previous one to avoid violating it. In-between stops don’t have this guarantee, but the last timed stop was close behind.
On the destination side of peak express routes prone to uneven congestion levels, the guarantee doesn’t apply so a bus will be early if traffic is light. The argument there is these routes aren’t for people at those stops: they’re for people who got on near the beginning of the route and need that expressness.
So we have to determine whether the 20 minutes early really occurred, where in the route, which direction the bus was running, and whether the schedule has that dagger symbol and a note saying buses may arrive early at that stop. It sounds impossible that drivers would leave guaranteed timepoints 20 minutes early when that would be a violation of Metro’s policy. Metro is acutely aware that passengers hate early buses more than late buses, because they don’t want to show up at a stop within the 2-minute window and the bus has already departed and they have to wait for the next one.
Ok I didn’t realize there is no timepoint between Monroe and Bellevue. Although Bellevue TC is a timepoint on southbound direction, it is a primarily a drop-off location, so nobody would mind 908 is half an hour early.
I thought we were talking about Metro routes. I know little about Community Transit or CT 906, so CT’s or ST’s policies may be different. But CT routes are for the benefit of Snohomish County residents, so guaranteed timepoints for an express route would presumably be the Snohomish County ones, or Bellevue TC northbound.
I know. I was just pointing it out because of the traffic claims only up to Woodinville.
“Due to crowding, bicycles and scooters are not permitted on board Link Light Rail on World Cup match days.” I don’t agree with this policy. For some, a bike is a necessary part of their commute.
Maybe we should allow cars on trains as well. Why not? Essential part of the commute.
If we had been advertising car-carrier trains for years, and people were regularly using them as part of their commute… then in that case, I’d agree we shouldn’t suddenly stop running them on World Cup days.
Agreed
“Maybe we should allow cars on trains as well. Why not? Essential part of the commute.”
Well put.
Typical Sound Transit. Rather than restrict things for just a few busy hours, they ban things for full days.
ST gives all this lip service to rider experience and yet they don’t really care it they wouldn’t issue such blanket bans like it’s a mere inconvenience like a non-working sign.
Indeed. We won’t have good transit in Puget Sound as long as the current Sound Transit management is standing in the way blocking the tracks.
It’s insane. The stadiums fill up and we get crowds all the time. I don’t understand what is so special about the World Cup.
The New York City Subway, which gets far more crowded than Link, has no restrictions on bikes at any time.
FIFA has extra safety and security demands for the World Cup. The transit management is likely in response to those requirements.
The local soccer news site/blog, Sounder at Heart, published a transportation guide for the World Cup: https://www.sounderatheart.com/2026/06/how-to-get-to-world-cup-matches-in-seattle-without-losing-your-mind/
It seems like many visitors will amass well ahead of the games and simply walk to the stadium. Fans were lining up five hours before USA-Paraguay’s kickoff in L.A., while the Belgian fans were planning to meet up at a place at 7 a.m. (!) and then march en masse to Lumen Field for the noon kickoff.
For a general fan guide, including more travel tips, fan zones, analysis of the teams, and a well-deserved thrashing of FIFA’s dynamic-pricing ticketing, https://www.sounderatheart.com/2026/06/the-world-cup-is-now-here-everything-you-need-to-know/
“Few American cities can match Seattle’s bike infrastructure”
ROFL. What about Portland; New York City (Manhattan); and Davis, California? Chicago might have joined the bike-infrastructure building binge too.
Perhaps those’re the “few American cities” he’s talking about?
“New York City (Manhattan);”
Not sure if NYC is more bike friendly than Seattle. For one, their buses don’t carry bike.
I meant bike lanes. I’ve read they’ve been installed along a large part of the shore and other streets, and are very popular. The last time I was in New York was in the 2000s so that was before the bike lanes, transit priority lanes, and pedestrianization the city has been doing since the 2010s.
I can’t imagine why you’d put a bike on a bus for trips within Manhattan: it’s so small you can bike to anywhere if you have a bike. I could see it for longer trips to another borough or outside the city, but for that you’d need to put your bike on the subway or regional train, and I don’t know if they support bikes at all or not.
“I can’t imagine why you’d put a bike on a bus for trips within Manhattan”
I can’t imagine why you have to bike in Manhattan at all if it wasn’t for a joyride or moving small-size cargo.
Biking has been the fastest way to go crosstown for well over a century. Possibly the most dangerous way, but fast.
It’s true that most buses don’t have bike racks, but you can take your bike on the subway, so it hardly matters.
I think that New York is nicer than Seattle for biking primarily because it’s flatter, and distances tend to be shorter.
Few (Large) American cities can match Seattle’s bike infrastructure. That’s a true statement.
“Perhaps those’re the “few American cities” he’s talking about?”
Oh, you’re right. My brain misinterpreted “few American cities” as “no American cities”.
Does anyone know how crowded Link light rail trains were today? I didn’t get to see since I had school. I will check it out on June 19th though. I also expect more people on June 19th since it’s a holiday.
I did watch the world cup game in WA state history class today. I couldn’t tell whether there were big crowds or not as the camera was focused on the players not the audience.
Does anyone have any footage?
It didn’t impact my morning commute.
I’d say it was quite… light when I rode Redmond-bound 2 Line around 8:20am from Westlake.
My bus to Downtown Seattle was more crowded than usual though. Maybe more people quit driving to Downtown than usual.
Maybe more people quit driving to Downtown than usual.
Yes, I think that happened. I live in the north end and decided to go hiking by Mount Rainier. I normally encounter plenty of traffic on the way back, especially as the HOV lanes become express lanes. It was smooth sailing. I had one other person in the car so I was able to drive in the carpool but really didn’t need it. In contrast, the trip up 405 in the morning was as crowded as usual. The people who work in Bellevue drove in.
I was downtown this morning for a medical appointment, and then I rode the G to Trader Joe’s and back. Traffic and buses were normal. I saw people in soccer jerseys going into hotels.
Last week my doctor’s office left a message saying the World Cup was on the day of my appointment and traffic was expected to be much worse than usual. It may have been just before noon and in the afternoon, but I didn’t see any.
“I couldn’t tell whether there were big crowds”
Seattle Times: “The announced crowd was 66,775. The official capacity for the stadium, according to FIFA, is 66,925.”
The CID station from two hours after the game, via “Sounder at Heart” head writer Jeremiah Oshan: https://bsky.app/profile/jeremiah.sounderatheart.com/post/3moegkc5be223
That’s similar to Seahawks Day. I went down then to check how transit was doing. I took the shuttle from Capitol Hill to CID. I went to Stadium station soon after the rally finished: there was a southbound queue stretching to the sidewalk. The northbound queue was only half the platform. I got on a northbound train and was the last who could fit on. At CID, PSQ and Symphony nobody could get on, and both platforms were full extending up through the mezzanine. I got off at Symphony so I didn’t see Westlake firsthand. I took the downtown circulator route north (that replaced most of the other routes) to the Mercer Street transfer hub. The bus was busy, with several people asking how to get to somewhere or other (U-District, Fremont, etc). Metro said certain routes would still come downtown but then they didn’t and it kept changing. Some said they’d waited an hour for Link and gave up on it. I told them what I would do, using local routes; e.g., 70 to U-District, 40 to Fremont, and that they should find them at the transfer hub.
There were two shuttles: the north-south one on 3rd Avenue, and the First Hill/Capitol Hill one I took. The latter was hardly used at all: I was the only passenger, and the driver said nobody or few people had used it so far. I think most people didn’t know it existed.
Differences from today: The regular routes are still going downtown. The 3rd Avenue shuttle is in addition to regular service. Link’s performance we’ll know more as the anecdotes come in.
I just found out that the ex-Barnes Noble building in Downtown Bellevue is so torn down right now from Onni 606 LIVE Cam — Downtown Bellevue 3-Tower Project | 24/7
It is for this project: https://onni606.com/
Cool webcam. That former Barnes & Noble store, and the Starbucks inside of it, was mentioned in the book The Everything Store. (Jeff Bezos had a meeting with Sinegal there).
Ages ago, it used to be the Belle Lanes bowling alley. But, I can’t wait for the residential part of this project to be built so housing prices can go down.
I heard that the 565 108th Ave NE, the affiliated building to 555 108th Ave Amazon office was developed to be a bowling ally at some point, but the plan didn’t come through. It is still empty now.
It was the John Danz movie theater when I was growing up in the 70s. Star Wars 2 came out when I was in junior high, and my friends were sitting in the huge line that went all around the parking lot half the day for it.
I went to visit them in line, but I didn’t watch it: my only Star Wars experience was Star Wars 1 a year after it came out. I was allergic to hype. But I did find the movie funnier than I expected. “I’d rather kiss a wookie.”
The movie theater was all one large screen. That was common then, when you got big crowds for one movie. But it couldn’t compete with the multiscreen format that later audiences demanded so they could get more movie choices.
I see they also tore down the building just to the south of the B&N building, the former John Danz theater. Just out front, on 106th, use to be the original Bellevue Transit Center, built in 1985. The shelters and benches are still there. Private buses use the space nowadays.
The metal columns on the sidewalk were installed for the first transit center. The columns have a crank; if you turn it, a birdie thing at the top of the column rotates. The column design is based on air-conditioning ducts: it was a precursor to the industrial decor movement, where restaurants/studios that have their interior ducts and pipes exposed.
Noticed the other day that there was a sign on the corner of 116th and NE 12th saying they were going to build an 8 story residential building where Bellevue Medical Imaging currently is. That’s a short walk to Wilburton Link station.
“Some 1 Line trains are turning back at SeaTac/Airport Statioin to relieve congestion. At SeaTac/Airport Station, passengers may have to transfer to next available train to Federal Way Station.”
This was at 12:48 am! I woke up at 4am three hours later and saw this. What happened? Did tons of post-game revelers leave the bars at midnight and go home to the south end? Did visitors all go to catch midnight flight or spend all night at the airport for early-morning flights? Did ST’s alert system hallucinate?
There were no reports of extraordinary crowding in the afternoon when we would have expected it. So did it happen at midnight? Did crowding occur this afternoon or evening but nobody in the comment section was there to witness it? Not even Sam our ace reporter and the emperor of the comments section if he does say so himself?
I saw a few photos/videos online showing crowd control methods at ID/C Station, mainly queuing riders so the platforms wouldn’t get crowded. Trains were certainly busy in the late afternoon. It seems most game attendees went straight to nearby venues to watch the next game, so it’s entirely possible there was a crush at midnight after the last game/match of the day.
I just found J Man’s videos and really enjoy them.
Good mix of exploration, information, and humor.
The First Hill Improvement Association is hosting a public meeting tonight with Sound Transit. Since Sound Transit recently submitted their Draft Environmental Impact Statement to the FTA, I wonder if they will share any of its contents at the meeting…does anyone know if a DEIS is considered a public document prior to publication? (Per presentation by Terri Mestas at the last system expansion committee meeting, they are still “coordinating with FTA to identify a new target published date (previously Q2 2026).”) It would probably be a more useful meeting if we knew more about the impacts of potential options on First Hill.
What does First Hill have to do with DSTT2/Ballard DEIS? ST has long said it won’t consider rerouting DSTT2 via First Hill because it’s either outside the scope of what voters approved (stations in the downtown office-tower district) or proponents suggested it too early or too late in the process. (ST’s argument changed at different times.) Is this all about mitigating losing the Midtown station transfer to RapidRide G? Is that finally getting political clout, three years after ST made the decision to move the preferred alternative to James Street?
Well, the decision to eliminate the Midtown and CID HUB Stations in favor of North & South CID as preferred alternatives came out of the blue in 2023. I don’t think they had any outreach to First Hill about scrapping the Midtown Station and its long-planned connection with Rapid Ride G. At the time, I was told by a Sound Transit Board Member that they would continue studying options other than the preferred alternative, pending the Final EIS, and that he was “committed to having the RapidRide G Line serve whichever station is ultimately selected – Midtown or North of CID.” Of course, he’s not on the Board anymore, nor are Harrell or others. All of this suggests to me that 1) the Board is capable of changing its collective mind, sometimes at the last minute 2) they have not made final decisions, signed contracts, gotten federal funding, or started digging and many implementing details for DSTT2 are probably yet to be determined, 3) so folks should still try to stay informed and influence what happens to try to make the system better. I was under the impression that comments on a draft EIS could potentially affect the process. Isn’t that the point?
Good point. The board has given the impression that everything is settled. It isn’t. That is not just my opinion but the opinion of someone who is very familiar with the process: https://www.theurbanist.org/op-ed-sound-transits-board-is-about-to-vote-on-a-fantasy/. What the board did was make it clear what its priorities are, that’s all. West Seattle and the second tunnel is more important to them than serving Ballard or Interbay. But what it will actually look like is a mystery at this point. Given that, it is makes sense for First Hill to push for a station that is most beneficial to the transit-neglected neighborhood.
Swift BRT is “rubber tire rapid transit.” In fact, BRT is considered high-capacity transit, though you’d never know it when you read politicians and others complaining about not having transit, e.g., when the Link line to Federal Way, where King County Metro’s “A” RapidRide line has had a terminal for years, opened. The Snohomish County Executive and now Sound Transit Board Chair was invited to try Swift Blue multiple times back in its early days (2009) BY the then-project manager, but ghosted them each time. Meanwhile, it was on his insistence that light rail dogleg to Boeing, even though BRT and limited stop express buses have served that plant for years-and those from south county were axed due to low ridership decades ago. Apparently for these folks, only expensive light rail will do. Someday, maybe we’ll find out if that’s the case. BRT can be implemented in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost of light rail and can even be moved if the need shifts, while providing a speedy ride from point to point, particularly where they have an exclusive lane and where access management has been employed. Unfortunately, the best we get is a lane that allows right turns for non-buses, but most of the time, that’s not an issue. More of an issue is the lack of access management, i.e., instead of a business having multiple entrance points, they’re consolidated into fewer or even one, with the one eliminated being right in front of a bus station. Unfortunately, this wasn’t part of the plan, but most drivers do an amazing job of managing this. Swift BRT has run for almost 17 years now, with new lines on the way. Like Link, it automatically stops at every station, and payment is on the “honor system,” with similar collection results (mostly from those who have ORCA cards that their employer pays for). BRT is typically a precursor to light rail: used in low-to-medium density areas until growth determines otherwise. However, as we know, in this region, this differs in some places.
BRT is typically a precursor to light rail
Yes, and even just regular bus service is the same way. There are caveats but if you have a bus route (or a lot of routes) running constantly and they are carrying lots of riders then replacing those buses with rail is often the right choice. Broadway in Vancouver is a classic example. Yes, it has “BRT” but it would likely have similar ridership with regular buses. It is a very strong corridor that justified rail years ago.
For more traditional buses, U-District to downtown is a good example. There were lots of express buses. There were lots of local buses (serving the combination of stops). These buses carried a lot of riders. Thus the subway line we built connecting the various stops was extremely successful. It made trips between those stops dramatically faster which led to high ridership.
But sometime a big improvement in speed can justify a subway line as well. A good example is Ballard to UW. It has the 31/32 and 44 but those buses are particularly slow. You can make them faster by investing in BRT-style improvements. But those typically take two forms: surface or grade-separated. Sometimes surface improvements are difficult or don’t lead to a huge speed improvement. Maybe the road is too narrow to add bus lanes (and center stations) or there are too many cross streets. Meanwhile, tunneling even for part of the way is expensive (although it would be the closest thing to regular light rail since the bus would be on the surface in places and grade-separated in others). Building a completely grade-separated tunnel for buses is about as expensive as just building a subway. Thus at some point you have to trust that a big improvement in speed will lead to a big improvement in ridership and if you are building a long tunnel (with no obvious connection points on either end) it makes sense to build a subway line (with automated trains). In other words, existing ridership numbers are just one thing to consider. Speed is another. But there are a host of other factors (like how it improves the network) that should be considered as well.
Both BRT and light rail have very broad definitions. So BRT can be a precursor but it may not be.
For example, the steepness of Madison Street means that there will never be surface light rail on it. Conversely, before the Beacon Hill tunnel there was no direct bus of any sort between SODO Station and Mount Baker TC.
[Ed: this got caught in the spam filter somehow.]
For example, the steepness of Madison Street means that there will never be surface light rail on it.
Well, theoretically you could have some sort of cog railway but yeah, it wouldn’t be easy. It also means that cut and cover would be difficult as well. Tunneling would work but then you have really deep stations and given the distance it just isn’t worth it. BRT is the way to go on the corridor, especially since it isn’t too crowded.
Conversely, before the Beacon Hill tunnel there was no direct bus of any sort between SODO Station and Mount Baker TC.
That is a great local example of how a subway can make a very different connection (not just a faster one).
“BRT is typically a precursor to light rail: used in low-to-medium density areas until growth determines otherwise.”
Theoretically yes, but in practice here the choice is often arbitrary. Link gets pushed into areas that have political clout. Larger cities like Renton and Kent get left behind. Bus routes that should be 10-15 minutes full time have 30-minute evenings or maximum 30-minute service for decades before they’re finally upgraded. Many of them still don’t have a plan for when they’ll get full-time 15-minute service.
A 30 min bus route is better than service that does not exist.
But it’s not adequate bus service. We need transit that’s a real alternative to driving. That’s the only way to become a “transit first” region, where average people find transit a good choice over driving for most of their trips, and car ownership share can get below 50%. In order to get there, transit needs to be ubiquidous: every 10-15 minutes full time, and go to all reasonable places and transfer points. That’s what cities that have high transit mode share and public acceptance have. Vancouver, Toronto, and Zurich aren’t perfect, but they’re better than comparable US cities in this regard.
It may not be possible to do that right now. There may not be enough resources or enough political will. But cities still need to set the goal, define incremental steps and milestones to get there, follow up on them, and address problems and limitations that get in the way. That’s what we have politicians and agencies for: to do the things that get us to a well-functioning city and region and keep us there. Other cities and countries around the world have done it, including those poorer than Pugetopolis or the US. It’s a matter of setting the right goals and priorities and following up on them. It costs nothing to set up goals and priorities, and that helps guide your future decisions.
The problem is that Seattle, Metro, Sound Transit, and the other cities and the counties are nowhere near setting up such a goal or implementing it. The state and federal governments are nowhere near making it easy for cities/counties to do so. Instead the cities/counties set goals that are far less than this, and rather than saying “we can’t afford to do it right now but we’re getting there”, they ignore the goal or say it’s unimportant. That’s why many people in Renton and Kent and Issaquah have little access to transit for their trips, and the cities aren’t doing anything about it, or they say “It will all be better when this Link/Stride/RapidRide line opens in ten years”, but people’s mobility needs are now, and even when those lines open, they won’t serve the entire city and all neighborhoods, so they need something else besides it, and they need it now.
Seattle’s Frequent Transit Network, Wilson’s STM renewal goals, and Zahilay’s “Metro Next Stop” endeavor, and Metro’s restructures, are at least steps in the right direction. They may be a large or small step, but something is better than nothing, and at least improve mobility options to some extent for some number of people over the status quo.
But we really need somebody like an enlightened politician with Jarrett Walker-like wisdom to say, “This is what we need. We don’t need any more than this. All your existing plans fall far short of it, and leave people and trips out that transit should serve. Here’s how to get there. You other politicians should join this vision and help make it happen.”
To the original argument, people sometimes say this or that route doesn’t have enough ridership to justify frequent service, but they have an unrealistic view of what enough is. They think they should see 75% of the seats filled all day every day or something, but that’s not how effective transit works, and they don’t realize there are more passengers that they don’t see, because the others got on after the observer got off or vice-versa, or they count only the load at a moment and not all boardings at any part of the run.
There needs to be a good baseline of frequency, which is 10 or 15 minutes full time until 10pm on all all-day core and express routes and most “coverage” routes. regardless of ridership. That’s the minimum for an urban/suburban area like King County, Pierce County, or Snohomish County. Then you add more runs as necessary to relieve crowding. This way everybody can step out at any time and there will be a bus within 15 minutes, and multi-seat rides are more reasonable. They won’t say, “I’ll drive because there won’t be a bus for 30 minutes, or I don’t know whether they’ll be a bus in less than 30 minutes so I’m not going to spend time checking, I’ll just drive.”
And you add peak expresses if there are cases where the regular network is just too unreasonably slow for common longer-distance work trips that a significant number of people do, or if you’re adding a run anyway for capacity you might as well make it an express because an entire busful of people is going; e.g., Ballard-downtown (15 vs D).
If there are routes with extremely low ridership, then you need to look at whether the route is too close to another one, or none of the routes at their stop go to the surrounding shopping centers/libraries/etc that average people need to go to, so the routes themselves aren’t very useful so people don’t use them. Then maybe you need to delete a route or restructure the network. But infrequent service is not the way to go: that just leaves latent ridership on the table and doesn’t meet average people’s mobility needs.