Route 545 doesn’t save as much time as you think

Sound transit first let riders formally have a say on the potential changes in early 2025 as part of their 2026 service plan, and have a say they did! They received more feedback on route 545 than any other route by far, with its feedback results showing about 14% of respondents providing feedback on route 545, the runner-up being route 550 with about 9%. The broad consensus of the feedback was clear: don’t delete route 545. Sound Transit was so moved by these results that they did not even propose any changes to route 545 at all in any of their own ST Express proposals, even while moving forward with major changes nearby such as deleting route 550 and combining route 554 with route 556, relying entirely on Link to get I-90 riders to Seattle.

The reasoning is sensible. The 2 Line crosses the lake along I-90, so buses heading to Seattle via I-90 are the most duplicative of rail, and forcing a transfer would add little travel time (or even save time in some cases). Route 545, on the other hand, has a straight shot to downtown Seattle via the 520 bridge. Trading that for a detour to I-90 through Bellevue would add travel time, and riders told Sound Transit that this additional travel time isn’t acceptable. So when planning the 2026 ST Express network, Sound Transit decided to keep buses when travel times by cutting them would exceed 10 minutes (per The Urbanist, reporting from Sound Transit’s Director of System and Service Planning, Emily Yasukochi).

Status quo thinking, status quo outcome

In keeping with the feedback they received, Sound Transit’s eventual plan had routes 545 and 542 in the “no changes” column. Here are the resulting service frequencies as they took effect late last month:

During the week, riders will continue to have frequent service on route 545, but riders heading to UW or farther north opting to use the 542 will have no frequent service at any time. Missing a 542 could make taking the 2 Line all the around through Bellevue, Mercer Island, and downtown Seattle be a faster way to get to UW just because of the 30 minute wait. Worse yet, neither the 542 or 545 are frequent on weekends, making riders who have a faster trip have to decide between a fast but infrequent bus, or a frequent but circuitous train. By comparison, route 556 (which replaces route 554 and connects Issaquah to the 2 Line) sees frequent service every day of the week, and is also more usable for intra-eastside trips (e.g., Issaquah to Bellevue or Redmond) than route 554 was.

Travel times analysis

As part of its reporting on its proposals in the 2026 service plan, Sound Transit did an analysis of travel times on routes which were to be modified in 2026. Below is its analysis, which includes some popular trips which were made on routes 522, 550, 554, 556, 574, and 586 before the 2026 changes. They estimated travel times on these trips before the 2026 service changes (labeled “current”), and did the same estimate for travel times after the service changes (labeled “future”), under the new network. The final column gives an estimated additional travel time for each trip after the 2026 changes, with negative values indicating a quicker trip.

Per the rest of the document, these estimates are calculated by adding:

• Average wait time for the vehicle (frequency divided by 2)
• Travel time of the vehicle (given by a minimum/maximum range)
• If a transfer is involved, add 5 minutes of transfer time, plus the above metrics for the second vehicle

With Sound Transit being selective about which changes were made, it’s unsurprising that most of these trips saw a travel time decrease, with only Issaquah TC- downtown Seattle being slower in every case. More to the point, in all cases but one, additional travel time is less than the 10 minute threshold Sound Transit set for planning bus changes to new Link service.

Analysis of alternatives to route 545

Because Sound Transit did not make changes to route 545, they did not provide their travel time analysis. I suspect they analyzed trips on route 545 against the same trips on the Link 2 Line, as all trips between Redmond and Seattle on routes 545 map decently well to a single 2 Line trip. However, assuming route 545 is cut and service is added to route 542 (as proposed in 2021), a frequent route 542 with a transfer to the 1 or 2 Line at UW could also approximate any route 545 trip. Below is an analysis I did of six trips on route 545, using the same method Sound Transit used to calculate the other changes:

Trip A: Downtown Redmond to International District/Chinatown Station
Trip B: Downtown Redmond to Westlake Station
Trip C: Redmond Technology Station to International District/Chinatown Station
Trip D: Redmond Technology Station to Westlake Station
Trip E: Marymoor Village OR Bear Creek P&R to International District/Chinatown Station
Trip F: Marymoor Village OR Bear Creek P&R to Westlake Station

To easily see the impact of the changes, I’ve colored cells red if times are more than 10 minutes longer, green if more than 5 minutes shorter, a shade of yellow if less than 10 minutes longer, and a shade of blue of less than 5 minutes shorter. I’ve also marked 2 Line-only travel times in italics, and 542 + 1/2 Line travel times in bold.

From the results, I think Sound Transit only analyzed the travel time impact of 2 Line-only trips, and did not consider 542 + 1/2 Line at all. Because while (to my surprise) the 2 Line competes with route 545 very well on most trips, the directness of route 545 to Redmond Technology Station makes those trips impossible to match on the 2 Line, with an added delay of 20 minutes in the worst case. But when you add in the option to take the more frequent 542 and transfer to the 1 or 2 Line at UW, this adds a faster option in the exact cases where the single 2 Line trip fares the worst against the 545. In fact, when this option is added, every case has an alternative to its route 545 trip that adds less delay than the 10 minute planning threshold Sound Transit uses, with most trips getting faster (with the most improved trip being 25 minutes faster from Marymoor to IDS).

Lastly, one thing this analysis doesn’t account for is something that you often see on route 545 toward Seattle on weekday afternoons, which are catastrophic delays. In particular, the turn from Steward St to 5th Ave often gets so congested that route 545 buses often wait 10-20 minutes just to make this one turn. If the travel time analysis of alternative options wasn’t reason enough to move route 545 service hours elsewhere, the fact that Sound Transit is predictably wasting a large amount of service hours just waiting for this one turn just underscores how route 545 needs a second look.

Where could the service hours go?

If route 545 were to be deleted, this would free up a ton of service hours. Obviously the first priority would be to boost route 542 frequencies to 10 minutes peak/15 minutes midday, and extend to Bear Creek P&R via Downtown Redmond Station (taking over the 545’s eastern section). I also think route 542 should be increased to every 15 minutes on weekends as well (something which actually wasn’t proposed in 2021, as it kept the 542 every 30 minutes on weekends). Since half of this route 542 service already exist, this would only use up significantly less than half of route 545’s service hours.

The next priority could be restoring route 544 to South Lake Union. This was a route that Sound Transit created in March 2020 following a restructure that consolidated some service from Kirkland and Redmond to create a new route serving an emerging market for commuter service to SLU. However, being started at the beginning of the pandemic, it only operated a couple weeks before it was suspended. Originally, it proposed to be restored in 2021 as part of East Link Connections. I think this is a good idea, though I also think some changes should be made. King County Metro has shown it can run buses from SR 520 to the Mercer St exit today (something which was long though to be impossible in regular service) on route 256. Furthermore, WSDOT is planning to open a direct express lane connection between this exit and SR 520 for transit in the 2030s. So I think a restored 544 should exit at Mercer St, and could lay over at the bus layover area on Eastlake.

On the other end, it’s also worth reevaluating whether it makes sense to run the 544 to the Overlake P&R, or even to Redmond at all. If a shorter route 544 could be made more frequent, it could facilitate 2-seat rides if moved to the right places. The way I think it could maximize connection opportunities is to serve S. Kirkland P&R, then terminate at Spring District Station, with frequencies of 8 minutes. This allows connections from routes 542 and 270 at the 520 freeway stations, some Kirkland routes at S. Kirkland, and the 2 Line at Spring District (and transfers would work well from both the east and south here).

Whether the remaining service hours after changes to the 542 go into restoring route 544 or something else entirely, what will be the case is that, while not every rider will have a faster trip, many riders will, and all riders will enjoy more frequent and consistent service across every day of the week. When express buses complement rail rather than competing with it, then both services will work better for more riders.