The Ultimate ORCA Speedrun

40 Replies to “The Ultimate ORCA Speedrun”

1. This is awesome! I’m assuming you used agency-specific definitions for express bus vs. non? When I did something similar (all modes, any operator: https://city-hikes.com/2026/06/20/riding-all-transit-modes-in-seattle/), I relied on NTD-defined modes but that was admittedly an arbitrary choice based on wanting to do an interesting set of routes.

   I also am fascinated by work-driver routes. I had never heard of them before moving to Seattle and looking at the KT schedules – do you know of any other place that does something like this nationally? Seems pretty armed force base oriented so maybe I’ll poke around other places with big presences. I guess it has a lot in common with vanpool services, but the fact that anyone can ride them is pretty neat.

   1. Excluding the T Line, I followed agency branding/definitions. I figure if an agency is willing to spend the time and money to differentiate a service then it is worth checking out.

      I’m not aware of anywhere else that has a similar system to the Worker/Driver buses. Mike mentioned Metro used to run Boeing shuttles but I don’t know if those were open to the public. The Worker/Driver bus I rode had 20-25 passengers so there is definitely more demand than a VanPool can support. Only one other person boarded the bus outside PSNS.

      1. I love KT’s worker/drivers! The phantoms are especially comfortable and I will occasionally take one if it fits in my schedule.

   2. In the 80s south Bellevue Way had a Metro 245 express to Renton Boeing. In the 90s my mom worked for Boeing and took some of these special Boeing routes.

      She told me an anecdote that still pisses her off and she keeps bringing it up. She and her coworkers used Metro’s special routes to various Boeing plants. She went from Overlake to Lynnwood, although I don’t know if that particular one was Metro. But there was another one that had stops on an arterial near riders’ houses. Metro rerouted it to serve only a P&R. There was no other route to the P&R, and some of the people didn’t have cars. They complained to Metro. Metro said (maybe not as condescendingly as my mom quoted it), “Well, you’ll have to buy a car to drive to the P&R to take the express bus.”

      My mom couldn’t believe the response. Metro’s job is supposed be to reduce the need for cars and VMT, not increase it. You can say, maybe Metro had to consolidate the route to the P&R for efficiency. But Metro didn’t acknowledge the last-mile burden that created at all. The very idea of spending tens of thousands of dollars on a car just to drive one mile to a P&R is ridiculous. And this was long before Uber or e-scooter/e-bike rentals were invented.

      That was part of a larger problem with Metro in the 1980s that lingered into the 90s. At the time I was a teenager and thought that’s just the way the US is after 1950 and there’s no hope for anything better. Most Seattle routes were half-hourly; almost all suburban routes were hourly. Three-quarters of suburban routes were peak expresses to downtown or such. In Bellevue the all-day routes were generally on Bellevue Way, NE 8th Street, and 156th/148th. I was lucky my parents happened to buy a house on the route that went to downtown Bellevue, Bellevue High School, and downtown Seattle. Most of Bellevue didn’t have an all-day route. My lifelong transit ridership and non-driving may never have been possible without it. There were peak expresses on 140th, 148th, 164th, and Lake Hills Connector, but those were useless if you didn’t have a 9-5 job downtown.

      As I learned decades later, Metro’s general manager in the 1980s believed buses were primarily for peak expresses and coverage. In the 2010s our ex-commentator friend on Mercer Island pointed me to an Eastside transportation forum. I watched the video, and the hosts were Kemper Freeman and that 1980s General Manager (then retired, I don’t remember his name). They said the only “transit” problem is peak congestion. Their solution was more vanpools instead of buses. Off-peak, congestion isn’t an issue so everybody can drive and you don’t need buses. Wow, no wonder Metro service was so skeletal in the 1980s. This started to change in the 1990s, but that’s the inherited situation it started from.

      The 245 was open to the public I assume. I don’t know if the unnumbered Metro Boeing special routes were. The current 8xx/9xx school routes are open to the public.

   3. What makes the worker-driver program unique compared with the Boeing shuttles Metro used to run is that the operator is both a full-time PSNS worker and a part-time Kitsap Transit employee. At night the coaches are parked in places close to the driver’s home.

      I believe Mason Transit also has one or two worker-driver routes to the shipyard. In the afternoon, you can often see one of their coaches parked in the KT Bremerton base, which is next to the shipyard’s Charleston gate.

      The program dates back to World War II and the private operators that preceded Kitsap Transit.

      1. So wait, it’s actually a super-sized vanpool?

         (I know we’re getting into “is a burrito a sandwich” territory here, but it sure seems like this is the case.)

         1. That’s basically what they are, except the driver is paid.

            https://www.governmentjobs.com/careers/kitsaptransit/jobs/5166834/worker-driver

2. I’d love to see paratransit become part of the ORCA network throughout the four counties.

   Currently, Metro and Community Transit allow paratransit riders to pay with ORCA accounts, ahead of time. (There are no ORCA readers on the vans.) Both agencies honor free rides for Subsidized Annual Pass holders, as well as for youth under 19.

   Ultimately, I’d love to see a paratransit day pass, costing, say, $4 and covering $2, and having all 5 local transit agencies set their paratransit fares at the same amount, $2 in this example. Also, have ST, the monorail, the streetcars, and all the ferries honor said day pass for full value on all their services.

3. This is awesome. I may try south to north one of these days. Not sure if bringing a bike would be a help or hindrance. If taken one on the West Seattle water taxi before.

   Maybe using Vashon to southworth to Port Orchard to Bremerton would spice things up. That would make sounder tricky though.

   1. The last northbound Sounder train is at 5:45 pm. You should be able to be back in downtown Seattle by then.

      Something like T Link – Pierce Transit – Washington State Ferry – King County Metro on Vashon – Washington State Ferry to Southworth – Kitsap Transit to Port Orchard – Kitsap local ferry to Bremerton – Kitsap Fast Ferry to Seattle – C Line to West Seattle – Water Taxi bus route to Water Taxi to downtown Seattle – bus to Seattle Center – monorail to Westlake – Link to Capitol Hill – Streetcar to King Street Station (if you want both Soundtransit and Seattle streetcars) – Sounder to Edmonds – CT to Aurora – Swift to Everett – ET inside Everett

      1. That sounds like an awesome day. I don’t think it would be under 10 hours, but still fun.

4. One other Puget Sound area transit speedrun challenge that might be interesting:

   All King County Metro trolleybus routes, similar to the London Underground challenge.

   You’d have to decide how do such things as the very rarely used link between the north end of the 1 and 2 in Queen Anne, and if to count long term diesel operation such as what’s happened to the 70.

   1. The 1 and 2 were through-routed on weekends on Raye Street for several years, so that would have avoided walking between 6th Ave W and 10th Ave W. I don’t think they do that anymore.

      A trolley network speed run is an interesting idea. I’ve never seen the point in speed runs, but this trolley-network one is the first one I’ve found intriguing. I do keep the trolley route network in my head. But that’s for the neighborhoods/corridors served. I rejoice in taking a trolleybus when it’s going my way. But I don’t transfer from trolley route to trolley route for the sake of doing it. I’m not sure if I’d be motivated to ride all of the trolley network in one day just to do it once or not.

      1. Based on the 1 map, it looks like they still use that section as a snow route and use it to cover the north end of the 2 with buses from the 1, but isn’t snow service non-trolley?

         1. This was a regular weekend pattern in the 80s. The 2 would go out and come back as a 1, and vice-versa. I never understood why. They were still trolleybuses. This was the same era where the 3N and 4N were combined into one “4 Night/Sunday route”. I guess it reduced the number of buses and layovers somehow to save operating costs?

            In any case, that’s unrelated to the current snow route that uses the same street. The reason the 2 follows the 1 during snow is Queen Anne Avenue is very steep, and the 1 routing avoids that. They both then go to the 2’s terminus. If you want even more fun, see the 13’s schedule. It follows the 1 and then does the entire upper part of the 2’s route and part of the 4. Meanwhile the 4’s schedule says it’s sometimes truncated at 5th & Valley “when Taylor Avenue N is closed” during snow. So the 13 would then be the only way to get to Queen Anne & Boston.

   2. I was looking at the history. Apparently the 70 was de-electrified in 2010 for what has apparently been 16 years of continuous road improvement work (?) for the RapidRide J.

      Unless the plan is for the J to be electric, I don’t think the wires are ever coming back.

      1. The J will be a trolley route as far as I know. Metro never said anything about dieselizing an existing trolley route.

      2. I think the initial 70 dieselization was for the reconstruction of Fairview Ave N viaduct. That may have overlapped with other projects and J construction after it. Possibly the 520 work that dieselized the 49 temporarily. I thought the 70 had reverted to a trolleybus already but I rarely ride it anymore.

      3. Not sure what was going on in the 2010s, but the 70 was definitely running trolleys sometime in the 2020s, as I have a picture of a 70 as a trolleybus from maybe 2022 (before I moved to Seattle).

5. Nice! No speedrun is complete without a little actual running 🏃

6. It is worth noting that this blog was instrumental in getting the monorail to support ORCA. It probably wouldn’t have happened without us. It occurred in the comment section. It is a kind of a long story but this is what happened: On an open thread I mentioned the monorail. Other people mentioned how they use the monorail to get to Uptown (instead of a bus). We all agreed it would be nice if the monorail took ORCA. Someone mentioned how the monorail is operated. It is owned by the city but they contract out to a private company. It is a ten year contract and usually gets renewed with little fanfare (and no competition). As it turns out, the renewal was coming up. The city council was going to vote on it soon. We organized an email campaign aimed at the city council. It worked.

   1. That the Monorail takes Orca as payment is nice, but the really big benefit was that they accepted Orca transfers too. They since dropped that part. I hope it gets restored at some point, maybe when the contract needs to be renewed?

      1. Get an ORCA day pass, and the monorail upcharge will be only $1 per ride.

         It is worth noting that Seattle Monorail Services resisted accepting ORCA. At the time, they were only accepting cash. But they got the technology set up to accept debit/credit cards and ORCA, shortly before the pandemic.

         Then they quickly switched to not accepting cash.

         1. More people should know this. It also works on the water taxi and Sounder for around $2-3 upcharge. If you are traveling around Seattle for a whole day, the day pass is absolutely a steal. Many other cities have a similar pass which I’ve been buying when visiting (of course I calculate if it is cheaper without day pass for my plans)

         2. Also if you’re a regular traveler the monthly pass is even better. You get a full month of transit for only 18 day passes worth of money (36 total trips). And check if your employer (if applicable) subsidizes it.

         3. Unfortunately, children are not free on the monorail, either. They didn’t use to enforce this, but now they do. I don’t ride the monorail anymore as a result. It’s a bit better than the bus, but if you have two kids with you, the difference is not worth paying an extra $10.

         4. Thanks for the reminder on the Day Pass. I don’t realize you can put it on Google Wallet, but you can. OTOH, I don’t always know in advance if I’m going to need 2+ rides or not. But if we ever get fare capping…

         5. I hope the monorail has a ticket machine so that people with cash but no credit card or smartphone or who don’t want to use them can still board.

         6. I wouldn’t use the monorail for years because it didn’t accept ORCA transfers, and I didn’t want to pay double fare for a two-seat ride, so I used one of the Uptown bus routes instead. Finally I started using the monorail again, to enjoy the experience, because a few dollars a few times a year isn’t much, and I treat it as part of the activity cost (whatever I’m going to the Center for) rather than a transportation cost.

         7. Sometime in the future, youth will need a youth ORCA card to enter or exit some of the light rail stations.

            If it is overwhelmingly tourist families paying full fares for kids, that is much less of a social justice concern.

         8. It is worth noting that Seattle Monorail Services resisted accepting ORCA.

            Yes. They had to be forced by the city council to do it. It was this blog that got the city council to add that into the contract. Even then they had a pilot program for a while (it took longer than it should have).

7. So far, none of the ORCA speedruns use Amtrak Cascades, for which monthly ORCA pass holders can buy local tickets that overlap Sounder.

   It might be one way of returning to Seattle in the evening to complete the loop.

   1. Or Tacoma.

   2. You have to have a pass as high as the highest Sounder fare on the route, even if you’re not going that far. That leaves out almost everybody, because they either don’t commute on Sounder, or use only part of the route with a lower fare (e.g., Seattle-Kent).

   3. The Sounder Rail Plus program is only good on Cascades trips north of Seattle.

      1. So if Cam were to do his proposed south to north trip, he could use it to get back to Seattle from Everett or Edmonds on train 519, assuming he has a monthly pass that covers that, yes?

      2. and don’t forget, Amtrak does not stop in Mukilteo.

         Also, a physical Amtrak Rail Plus ticket needs to presented to the Amtrak conductor, which is obtained from Sound Transit’s ticket vending machines.

8. Is it a requirement that the WSF ferry must be completed in a direction that requires payment (eg Seattle to Bremerton, not vice versa)?

   1. Nope, riding it either direction counts.

   2. It is worth repeating that WSF does not accept ORCA passes or transfers. It basically treats ORCA cards like debit cards.

      This leg of the super run may cost more than the rest of the trips combined, if one is riding WSF in the paying direction.

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