Leaders from King County and Seattle met at Golden Gardens Park Monday morning to inaugurate a new shuttle service direct to Golden Gardens Park. “Golden Gardens Direct” will provide a direct connection between Market Street in central Ballard to the park on Seaview Ave NW. Buses will run every 30 minutes every day from 11 AM to 9 PM, with service starting this Saturday, June 27, and ending on August 30. Passengers can transfer to the Golden Gardens Direct from routes 17, 40, 44, and the D Line. The shuttle will have stops at 34th Ave NW and every few blocks along Seaview Ave NW.
Rides will cost the same as a King County Metro bus: $3, free for riders aged 18 and under, discounted for those eligible for reduced fares, and transfers will be accepted. Tap to pay is not available on the route. When reached for comment, Elaine Porterfield of King Count Metro provided the following statement:
“Metro is in the process of installing equipment on the Hopelink and DART fleet to enable tap-to-pay, which could allow Metro to collect tap-to-pay fares on the Golden Gardens Direct shuttles later this summer. We don’t have an exact date yet when that will take place. We recognize that after just a few months of launching, tap to pay features have made it quick and easy to pay fares and ride transit. We’re eager to offer this feature on the balance of our services as soon as possible.”
The Golden Gardens Direct shuttle is funded by the Seattle Transit Measure for this year only. Service in future summers would require additional funding which could come from the STM renewal Mayor Wilson proposed earlier this month. With this service, SDOT and Metro aim to improve park access and reduce traffic congestion during peak summer season.
Metro bus service to Golden Gardens is not a new idea. Between the 1980s and 2012, Route 46 ran between the UW campus and Golden Gardens via Wallingford and Ballard. The route was often run with less-than-hourly service and for some years only limited runs would continue from Market Street to the Park. Route 46 was deleted in September 2012 due to low ridership, likely resulting from very infrequent service and poor density along the route. Since then, advocates and the city have mulled over various ways to bring buses back to Seaview Avenue, and even considered a shuttle in 2019.
Golden Gardens Direct’s 30-minute pace will be a significant improvement over Route 46’s former infrequency (and infinitely improved over the total lack of service today), even if a transfer is required for most riders. Potential Golden Gardens goers will likely find the wait more pleasant than circling the park’s limited parking lots or walking down from Sunset Hill.
Edit: Clarified the shuttle will have stops along Market and Seaview between the Locks and Golden Gardens and added comments provided by Metro.
I’m excited for this, even if I probably won’t use it much; the various Lake Washington beaches are so much closer to me. For a region that so clearly values natural beauty, it makes a lot of sense to connect major parks to transit. I wish it were in the form of an extension to the 44, but I’ll be interested to see how it works out this summer.
While I’d personally consider the connection with the 45 (and even the 40) to be serviceable for my own park going purposes, most people going to a beach don’t want to walk a mile up and down a steep hill to get there. Of the major Seattle parks, Golden Gardens is the least transit accessible. We all deserve good access to the parks of our choosing.
YES! Golden Gardens service would be an extended 44, whether it be a separate route or “every other trip”. The challenge is operating a large bus in a small turnaround spot with heavy congestion.
The challenge is installing expensive trolley wire in Metro’s limited budget. Metro has several higher-priority areas: the 1 1/2 block gap in the new 12 route (15th & Pine to 16th & Madison), the 1 mile gap to electrify the 48, the 3/4 mile gap to reroute the 7/R to Rainier Beach station. The route 44 RapidRide conversion was maybe going to add wire on NE 45th to reroute it to U-Village/Children’s. That was withdrawn due to a general Move Seattle capital-budget shortfall, of which the cost of trolley wire was one small part. Other trolley route extensions Metro/SDOT hasn’t even considered because of the cost of adding trolley wire. It’s only adding it for short 1-2 block gaps; e.g., to get it to U-District station, and for a few longer projects that take over a decade to realize like the 47 electrification, and 7 reroute, and moving the 3/4 to Yesler Way (which was intended in the 2000s but then withdrawn).
An extended 44 doesn’t need trolley wire. Simply operate deisel coaches on Golden Garden trips. But the larger issue is running large vehicles through the parking lot at the Gardens. Such large crowds everywhere and cars backing in/out… stopped for long periods waiting for others to leave.
I’m assuming the GG shuttle is operated by a contractor just like the Trailhead shuttle and DART routes?
I think battery operation should be feasible for a Golden Gardens loop. Maybe it would be possible to build a charging station at the final stop to ensure things go smoothly after a layover. It’s only about 1.5 miles, and I’ve been on trolley reroutes that are longer than that before. Last fall, there was a power line down at 12th and Weller and my 36 was rerouted to Rainier via College. The operator didn’t raise the wires again til we got to Jackson (though I suppose he could have earlier). It was at least 2.5 miles.
Running every other route 44 trip up Seaview Ave NW would be over 100 round trips per day, meaning most trips, even in the summer, would be almost empty. Almost every trip outside of the summer months would be empty. Keep in mind it’s a mostly a low density corridor, and gets the lowest score possible on the equity priority area ratings. So, whatever transit service this corridor receives should be minimal, like Metro Flex, and be at the bottom of a long list of more deserving areas for transit improvements.
Definitely in favor of having Metro Flex year round. But summer demand is strong. There’s no beach-access for the city (or region) between Shorline and Alki – unless you go to Lake Washington. Golden Gardens is extremely popular and establishing consistent service during the summer would, I believe, attract riders.
In a fantasy world, I envision a separate express route that runs from U-Dist to Golden Gardens that only makes stops at major transfer points: Wallingford, Aurora, Greenwood, etc and live-loops through the Gardens back to U Dist. Run the service from Memorial Day weekend to the Labor Day.
“Keep in mind it’s a mostly a low density corridor”
Keep in mind even coverage areas need transit, and this is a multifamily area so not low density. The steep hill up to 32nd and 24th and the lack of cross streets between Market Street and 85th means it has a higher claim to coverage service than a regular residential neighborhood with flat walks to arterials on all sides. The railroad track is functioning like a freeway, isolating this street.
The census block consisting of the marina (530330032012000) has about 625 residents per OFM Small Area Estimates, which works out to ~12k per square mile. That’s similar to medium-density residential areas in Seattle. And the equity priority index is just one tool, with the specific tract being considered obviously divided by the rail line. I’m not sure on the typical incomes of people who live at the marina, but I’d suspect it’s generally lower than the folks who live on the bluff.
Discovery Park is in a low equity priority area. Should the 33 terminate at Government Way and 34th instead? Seward Park is in a low equity priority area. Should the 50 terminate at Rainier and Genesee instead? Madison Park is a low equity priority area. Should the 11 terminate at Madison Valley?
The value is serving a park, one that is very popular with people of all ages and backgrounds. Parks that are in rich neighborhoods also need transit service. Extending the 44 makes network design sense and makes the park more accessible to way more people than a shuttle from Ballard does.
Seattle has a century-old “pearl necklace” set of peripheral parks. These are a major city amenity and tourist attraction, and help keep residents healthy. So they need transit to them, for the same reason Chicago has transit to all its tourist attractions. Metro hasn’t been able to serve it for years because of budget limitations and higher priorities, but that doesn’t mean the need or justification goes away.
“whatever transit service this corridor receives should be minimal, like Metro Flex”
Metro Flex is pseudo-minimal. It uses 2-4 times the service hours per passenger than a fixed route. Any more than the tiniest ridership would overwhelm Flex’s capacity. This has already happened in Tacoma where a few fixed routes were replaced by a Flex-like service, and now people can’t get to work and have to wait an hour for the taxi to show up.
Mike, would you agree that bus service to Golden Gardens is a lower priority than many other things?
“would you agree that bus service to Golden Gardens is a lower priority than many other things?”
Yes, but that’s a different argument than the one you’ve been making. You’ve been saying Seaview Avenue has absolutely too-low density or ridership for a bus route. It’s possible for a route or street to absolutely deserve a route or frequency, but Metro’s limited resources must go to higher-priority needs first and there’s not enough to go around. That’s a musical chairs situation. The right long-term solution is to scale transit service to meet all the mass-transit need a region has, not to say we can’t or that some streets that should have transit shouldn’t.
These exact same trolley buses in San Francisco run off-wire on the 30-Stockton to the Presidio in an almost identical situation. It can certainly happen.
Man, the lack of tap to pay is gonna be a problem for people. Lots of folks I know, myself included, have stopped carrying our Orca cards since tap to pay debuted. They’re gonna get 90% of the way into their journey only to be screwed over by a payment technology gap at the last stretch.
Are all the DART fleet also not accepting credit card right now?
There was also a predecessor of the 46 which used 50th between Aurora and 15th NE. It pre-dated the one shown. It ran through the ’70’s and into the early ’80’s. IIRC it was the “30X” when it started, but I think it was the “44” when the 30 was electrified and extended downtown as the “43” (conflation of the 4 and 30).
In the 80s when I was at UW or hanging out of the Ave, the 46 was a limited-stop route between Seaview Ave, Ballard, Leary Way, Fremont, Greenlake Way, and 45th to UW. It was the only way between Ballard and Fremont, and the fastest way from Fremont to UW, since the N 40th Street routes didn’t exist yet. But its infrequency midday deterred would-be users, who would take the 30/43 and walk if the 46 wasn’t coming soon.
N 40th Street service was first provided by a reroute of the 74 local. I don’t remember if that started in 1990 when DSTT opened or in the 2000s in another restructure. It was later renumbered to 30. After that a new 31/32 pair took it over, to provide one-seat Children’s-Fremont service. (So the 30, which had been on 45th, was then on 40th.) That became very popular with standing-room-only ridership. Partly because U-Village had expanded with a lot of retail and more apartments, and that created heavy demand between U-Village and campus and the 40th corridor and Fremont.
When I started riding in 1979 and throughout the 80s, the 43 was already a 15-minute (daytime) trolleybus on Pine, John, 23rd, Montlake, 45th, Market Street. The 30 was 30-minute a diesel route from Laurelhurst to 45th, Fremont Ave, and maybe some trips were extended to Magnolia. There was no trolley wire in Laurelhurst or Fremont Ave.
Hope this is not considered off-topic.
I read from some past posts that there was sort of an express version of 44 that uses 50th. Was that the 30X you are talking about and was that really faster than 44 back then?
I feel like 44 could use some express today if there is a road that can really make the 44X faster (probably not).
I remember a limited-stop route on 50th but I don’t remember if it was that 46 or another route. I know it was on the diagonal street between Fremont and 45th, so maybe it continued to 50th and then turned east.
Metro has tried many different service patterns for Shilshole and Golden Gardens. None have really generated strong ridership. Here are some historical versions of Shilshole service that I can find.
1980: Route 46 from Leary Way to GG, 9am-9:30pm, 40-minute headways, 7 days a week
1981: Route 43 extended from the 32nd Ave NW terminal GG, 9 weekday trips, no weekend service
1982: Route 46 Express service from the U District via 50th Street to Shilshole, 7 trips westbound/8 trips eastbound, no weekend service
1990: (during the Goodwill Games), Route 43 offers 7 weekday trips mimicking the 1981 pattern, Route 46 offering 3 peak hour trip in each direction, no weekend service
1992: Route 46 weekday service, 15 trips in each direction (30-minute headways peak/hourly headways midday). Shilshole-Fremont-NE 40th St. route path, no weekend service
1998: service similar to 1992
2008: Route 46 weekday service, 3 or 4 peak hour trips between Shilshole and the U District plus 3 daily positioning trips from Leary Way to Shilshole.
HZ, Yes and yes; 50th only had stops at Latona/Thackaray, Meridian and Stone Way; the 30/43 had seven or eight, plus a couple more stop lights. And it was a LOT easier in those days to get onto Green Lake Way from 50th by “going straight” than it was to stop at 47th and Woodland Park and wait for a break in the traffic.
However, because a bus hour is a bus hour, it never got service that equaled the 30/43 frequency, and, there’s no “there” on 50th and the bypassed area along 45th is where a lot of 30/43 riders were headed. So it never got much use.
It serves both Golden Gardens park and the rest of Seaview Avenue, whose residents and businesses haven’t had bus service for years.
It’s a good start. Golden Gardens needs service for two groups of riders: 1) a pocket of seniors who live out there and need to access Ballard for services and 2) recreational riders who want to visit the beach.
What’s really needed is the shuttle to connect U-Dist station. This will enable non-Ballard residents to access Golden Gardens without having to double-transfer.
That’s way to far for a shuttle to overlap the strategic frequent 44. Either the 44 will have to be extended, or it will always be a shuttle to Ballard or extended to another corridor in northwest Seattle (or to possibly north-central Seattle or Magnolia).
The 44 is the most natural alternative, since it’s already the primary east-west grid route in north Seattle. If it turns on Seaview Avenue north, there’s nothing west of it that would miss out on a grid route.
I am pleasantly surprised to to find out this shuttle runs all the way to 15th Ave NW. I’ve used 44 just to get around area west of Safeway more often than taking 44 all the way to Wallingford or U-District. It is a short walk from the lock to Ballard Ave, but with buses coming 6-8 times an hour, I am more than happy to tap my Orca Card so that I don’t have to spend extra 10 minutes on my way to Ballard Ave.
Not every trip has to be an exercise. Sometimes I just want to get to the destination as effortless as possible.
The Shuttle wouldn’t be as useful if it didn’t connect the highly popular D-line. Also, the shuttle isn’t just for beachgoers: there’s a pocket of seniors who live at Golden Gardens and need access to common services in Ballard – that includes the Safeway at 15th.
One interesting tidbit about route 46 – at the time, route 40 did not exist yet, leaving route 46 as the only bus between Fremont and Ballard, in spite of its very limited schedule.
The service restructure which eliminated the 46 and created RapidRide D also created the 40. Today, the 40 is a huge success, and it would be impossible to imagine the Seattle transit network without it.
Amen. Route 45 was also deleted with Route 46.
Metro is positioning the transit network so that most trips are on Link or RapidRide where possible. RapidRide A-H already have 25% of Metro’s ridership, an astonishing level for less than 10% of the routes. So that’s why the shuttle is extended to the D, for regional transfers.
Both the 40 and 44 have been RapidRide candidates, and are getting incremental improvements in the absence of that. So maybe in the future a shuttle could go just to 22nd and transfer to RapidRide or quasi-RapidRide lines, but we’re not there yet.
“Metro is positioning the transit network so that most trips are on Link or RapidRide where possible.”
That makes sense to me. I know that Seattle has a legacy of long, slow routes with close stop spacing. However, some sort of slow moving automated mini transit vehicle seems inevitable in several years to be the local service strategy. And a combined high frequency Link and RapidRide system seems to be an effective big city subway emulator.
“Both the 40 and 44 have been RapidRide candidates”
I forgot, they are RapidRide candidates again. They’re in the third phase from now, after the I,J,K,R and the 36,150. So they may be built in the 2040s if full funding is found.
“I forgot, they are RapidRide candidates again.”
With a few notable changes. The RR 40 has been extended to First Hill (is this really necessary?) and the RR 44 will be redirected to UW Medical Center (a bad idea imo). Metro is coming up with crazy ideas for it’s future RapidRide routes, like they’ve considered truncating RR 150 at Rainier Beach Station…
What!?
These are just initial concepts, not committed alignments. They’ll have to go through an EIS process.
Metro is now favoring extending routes from the north to First Hill, both for layover space outside downtown, and to address the difficulty in getting to First Hill, so it may have strong ridership.
The 44 already goes to UWMC so it’s not a change. The change is to reroute it east to Children’s. There’s a tradeoff: east is grid-correct and serves some riders and could allow the 31/32 to be restructured away from there, but south probably matches more people’s trips. I suspect Metro tried to do east but may have gotten so much negative feedback it’s stepping back from it.
Truncating the 150 at Rainier Beach has been something transit fans have been asking for for over a decade, so that people don’t have to ride a bus a long way paralleling Link, and would have direct access to southeast Seattle (which they don’t now). The tradeoff is it’s likely to increase travel time, and that’s why Metro has been reluctant to do it. But now it’s giving it more consideration, and putting it up as an alternative. From the discussion when the RapidRide prioritization came out, it’s not very likely to be chosen. BAR station will apparently allow the 150 to transfer to Link there, and continue to downtown. If the downtown alternative is chosen and West Seattle Link replaces the SODO busway, then the 150 would be rerouted to 4th Ave S, and the project would include improvements to that street, which SDOT has a project to do anyway, so the projects might be combined.
This shuttle should be completely free. I’ve had a cow walking from the 44’s western terminus to Golden Gardens Park already and I’m sure many people have too.
It’s not like it’s gonna be there forever. It doesn’t even have a proper number to start off with. Metro never told us they were going to bring back service to Golden Gardens after nearly 2 decades.
At least this shuttle will extend down to the future Ballard station, that’s where they will get a lot of the ridership. They must have been like; Hey! We’re not going to get anybody to ride if we don’t serve Market St.
I’m glad Golden Gardens is at least going to get bus service again this summer. The lack of public transportation to the area is probably one of the key reasons why I barely see anybody in the Shilshole Bay area. It feels eerie whenever I go there.
Go Seattle!
“Metro never told us they were going to bring back service to Golden Gardens”
It’s not Metro, it’s Seattle. Even if Metro operates it, the decision to run it and the funding come from Seattle. Metro doesn’t count these irregular routes in its network.
“Even if Metro operates it, the decision to run it and the funding come from Seattle.”
You mean SDOT funds for bus service in Seattle and not Metro? Is that why we’re getting a Golden Gardens shuttle until now? With Seattle being the only city in King County that helps fund it’s bus service I can see that’s the reason why every other part in King County lacks good bus service.
Mike, also look forward to a Golden Gardens Shuttle video on Saturday. I’ll be catching that first ride at 11 am at Market & 15th and I’ll be filming the entire ride.
“You mean SDOT funds for bus service in Seattle and not Metro?”
Seattle buys additional bus service from Metro beyond what Metro’s base revenue can fund. Most of it comes from the Seattle Transit Measure levy, but sometimes the city funds it from another part of the city budget, so I don’t know whether this is STM-funded or not.
Metro deleted the Seattle night owls in the 2014 cuts, so service after midnight is coming from the STM, at least for the non-RapidRide lines. So if the STM is not renewed, that service will go away, and I don’t know how much of the RapidRide night service would be affected. The STM is also boosting frequency on many routes like the 5, 8, 10, 12, 60, and others, that would otherwise run less often. The STM funds half of Trailhead Direct; the rest is partly funded by King County Parks. And the STM is probably funding the Waterfront Shuttle. So the Golden Gardens shuttle is just one more. It’s a one-year pilot.
It is sort of free to everyone who doesn’t live in Ballard, isn’t it?
Oh wait, does it get free transfer?
Ideally, the 44 would split at the Locks; half the buses would go up this route to Golden Gardens, and the other half would follow the 17’s route north on 32nd.
Ideally, it wouldn’t, because the majority of those route 44 trips to Golden Gardens would be empty. Half the total route 44 trips to GG would be 107 daily round trips. The current 44 makes 214 round trips per day. So, 107 daily round trips to GG is overkill. It’s the wrong tool for the job.
Obviously the middle-of-the-night trips wouldn’t be extended.
If you think that’s still overkill and want to cut it down to every third trip, that’s also defensible. But it’s the right tool; the question is just what angle to use it from.
Because the Golden Gardens via Seaview Ave routing has a long history of low ridership, I think the right tool for the job is either a summer shuttle, or at the most a Metro Flex or DART type of service.
“Because the Golden Gardens via Seaview Ave routing has a long history of low ridership, I think the right tool for the job is either a summer shuttle, or at the most a Metro Flex or DART type of service.”
Affirmative. DART service would make sense to Golden Gardens with plans for Water Taxi from Colman Dock to Shilshole Bay. West Seattle has had great success running DART buses to/from the Water Taxi in such rural-esque areas to the real zones.
I could see Metro Flex there thoughin order to serve Golden Gardens you would need to spread out through the entire Ballard area… That could work.
I just wish we could add a Sounder station in Ballard so we could extend the 44 there and run a DART bus linking the 44 and 45 and squirming through roads that are too small for a regular bus to run on. The 17X could also be truncated at this Sounder station, given that it only exists because of 32nd Ave otherwise it would have been cooked after the D Line opened. Market St riders could use a 44 + Link combination (of course you would need to speed up the 44), and also speed up the D Line so riders boarding south of Ballard can use that.
“I could see Metro Flex there thoughin order to serve”
though in
Ideally you can’t. Those trips would either need to be non-trolley or add trolley wires on Seaview Ave. Even if you wanted those trips to be non-trolley you would have very few trips run to Golden Gardens. Of course it’s ideal to have a few trips go to Golden Gardens, but it’s uncertain. Electrifying Seaview Ave is just a whole new world and costs more than running a simple shuttle between Golden Gardens and Ballard.
Route 7 has a similar approach with the Prentice St loop. Roughly every 3rd trip serves the loop. While it’s better than nothing, the low frequency and forced transfer for inbound trips result in low ridership.
A Route 44 extension may fair better as it has more apartments on the route and a popular park.
“A Route 44 extension may fair better as it has more apartments on the route and a popular park.”
Yeah but you would need to do something about the fact that the 44 is a trolley and not just any bus. Do you suggest installing trolley wires on Seaview Ave so the 44 can continue? Or do you think that 3rd trip should be a regular XD bus.
If you are the Michael Smith who does the posts about ridership analysis, I think you said you do requests to transit agencies to get the information you use. Do you think if you did a request for the route 46, even though it was deleted years ago, they might still have that information, and send it to you? I’d be especially curious to see what the ridership by stop was on the 46 on Seaview Ave. Like, was anyone riding it outside of the summer months? What was ridership like in the summer? Etc.
Sam, would you like to see how old 46 ridership data compares with the new Golden Gardens Direct shuttle data? That could be a possible article for studying bus service to Golden Gardens once the shuttle ends and Metro at least sends us some data.
Scooby, yes I would! I also look forward to your video. I would ask you to ask the driver how’s ridership, but since it’s the first day of the route, they won’t yet know.
We’ll know this fall how well the Golden Gardens Direct performs.
Sam – I’ll reach out to Metro and ask for data for Route 46 and other routes. If I recall correctly, they only need to keep records for 7 years so we may be out of luck. I like the idea of looking at ridership data for now-deleted routes as a way to see which areas are under-served in the current network.
There were a lot of sunken cost out front when they built the trolleybus network. If there was an abandoned wire all the way to Golden Gardens, I am sure Metro will be happy to consider running selected 44 trips to the park.
I think that’s part of reason why some people think streetcar is better than BRT-lite even if there is no travel time difference. It is less likely they will give up or change a rail line than they would to a bus route.
“If there was an abandoned wire all the way to Golden Gardens, I am sure Metro will be happy to consider running selected 44 trips to the park.”
Would it even work? How old would it be? And what about the trolley wires in Leschi? Shouldn’t that mean we should also electrify the 27?
“I think that’s part of reason why some people think streetcar is better than BRT-lite even if there is no travel time difference.”
No, we are not going to argue about Ballard Link.
“Route 7 has a similar approach with the Prentice St loop. Roughly every 3rd trip serves the loop. While it’s better than nothing, the low frequency and forced transfer for inbound trips result in low ridership.”
This is a trend Metro has done and is regretting it. From what I’ve seen, the 7, 271, and 215 (which will be restored Fall 2026) do this.
The R Line will replace the 7 in 2031 with Prentice St left in the dust.
The 220 and 270 will replace the 271 later this year and the Issaquah to Eastgate segment has been abandoned. It seems like Sound Transit is recommending the new 203 and the 556 for service from Bellevue, and Eastgate to Issaquah (with U District being left in the dust again with a 270 transfer). I doubt people in Medina and Lake Hills ride to Issaquah speaking that only another seat would be added to their ride.
The only exception here is the 215, which is supposed to double frequencies from North Bend to Issaquah due to the forced Link transfer in Mercer Island (which the city of Mercer Island sued Sound Transit for breaking their promise of not turning Mercer Island Station into a regional hub and shutting down the I-90 express lanes). Currently the 208 runs every 3 hours but the 215 will split that to every 1.5 hours (which is still pretty bad).
Overall your idea would make sense (especially for a place like Golden Gardens). Maybe the 44 could loop back to the locks to make it more like the Prentice St loop on the 7 and like the shuttle?
I’ve received a comment from Metro regarding tap to pay and updated the article with Metro’s statement.
I suspect ridership will be higher partly for psychological reasons: as a numbered Metro route it was worse service than 98% of Metro’s Seattle routes (less than 30-minute frequency), but as a Golden Gardens Direct route it’s a special service that makes the park accessible on transit. The “___ Direct” brand is also a winner, as “direct” implies no tedious time-consuming meandering.
Looks like it used to be the old former Route 46 ran up to Golden Gates, why don’t u create a new route, or restore the Route 46. Golden Gates to downtown Seattle.