All posts by Guest Contributor

By OLIVER CHEN

Living in Seattle, I’ve come to appreciate the humble bus. I find riding the bus much more pleasant than driving through the city (and certainly much better than circling for parking!). Sitting alongside my fellow Seattleites makes me feel like a participant in the ebb and flow of the city rather than sealed off from it.

Over time, I’ve gotten a sense for the rhythms of the routes that pass by my home: where people get on, where people get off, and when the bus fills up or empties out. Seeing that, I wondered if I could get that same view more broadly, across the entire city or even the entire region, rather than just the tiny slice visible from my front door.

King County Metro publishes a ridership dashboard as well as an annual system evaluation covering route-level performance. Those resources are great for tracking specific routes or for comparing ridership over time, but they don’t tell me where ridership is actually concentrated: where people are already riding transit, and where additional service might be most useful. In a city growing as fast as Seattle, getting transit right is a practical necessity; city streets simply cannot absorb the trips that Seattleites need to make.

Continue reading “Mapping King County Metro Ridership”

BY ISSAQUAH MAYOR MARK MULLET

The Sound Transit Board is facing large decisions regarding its budget shortfall. The Board is now expected to adopt an updated ST3 plan that will help reshape timelines for light rail segments across the region. Some projects, like the West Seattle line, are proposed to move forward now, while others, including Issaquah’s connection, are pushed back again — this time by six years. Meanwhile, construction of the Seattle Center to Ballard line is postponed indefinitely.

Let’s be honest: that’s frustrating.

Continue reading “How to Finish ST3 Sooner (Without Raising Taxes)”

BY TRANSPORTATION CHOICES COALITION

As many of you all learned last week, Sound Transit is facing significant cost projections for its Sound Transit 3 projects. Over the next few months, the Sound Transit Board will have to have some hard conversations about the future of light rail expansion in our region. Whether that means deferring projects, station consolidation, or pulling existing levers to find revenue, there is a lot to unpack. The Sound Transit Board will need to make tough decisions on what projects to prioritize, as well as ways to cut costs to deliver the projects promised to voters. 

Transportation Choices Coalition (TCC), along with community partners, have organized a series of town halls across the region to help educate the public on what is happening with Sound Transit.  These events will feature Sound Transit board members and staff – the folks who make decisions about the future of light rail – answering questions in a structured format. The events are open to all.

Continue reading “TCC Light Rail Town Halls”

On Monday, the Move All Seattle Sustainably (MASS) Coalition published an open letter calling on Mayor Wilson to advance high-impact transportation, accessibility, livability, and climate priorities. Seattle Transit Blog is a proud member of the MASS Coalition, and we endorse this letter. It reads:

Dear Mayor Wilson,

We, the MASS (Move All Seattle Sustainably) Coalition, write to request your administration take action on a set of high-impact, near-term actions that respond to public priorities and accelerate visible results for city residents, while preserving capacity for longer-term reforms.

Your recent electoral victory creates a historic mandate and an opportunity to translate progressive campaign commitments into real results for Seattle. Your leadership—built through years of grassroots organizing and coalition‐building, and long record as a transit advocate provide the momentum and responsibility to act swiftly on the transit and sustainability priorities you have espoused. Indeed, you co-founded the MASS Coalition in 2018 to connect Seattle’s diverse and vibrant neighborhoods, minimize reliance on private vehicles, achieve Vision Zero, make Seattle carbon-neutral, create walkable communities, and ensure equitable access to transportation for all people. As such, our coalition has a duty to call on you to pursue tangible progress on expanded service, equity‐centered planning, and durable funding strategies during your first year in office, when visible well‐executed actions will reinforce the core values of your platform and build political capital for deeper reforms.

Continue reading “MASS Coalition Letter to Mayor Wilson”

By JASON LI

King County Metro’s Route 8 is the slowest and least reliable bus route in the entire city. That was proven this summer when hundreds of transit advocates outwalked and outdanced the bus doing the slowest things we know during our Race the L8 event. The reason for this is painfully obvious: buses are constantly stuck in the traffic towards the I-5 entrances that brings Denny Way to a standstill. Despite all of its issues, Route 8 still manages to attract 7,000 daily riders. This makes it Metro’s eighth most popular route and is a testament to how vital it is as the only east-west bus route between downtown and the ship canal.

That’s why the Fix the L8 campaign has been advocating for bus lanes on Denny Way for years, including writing a three part series for the Seattle Transit Blog earlier this summer. We were honored to have been able to stand and speak with City Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck when she echoed our call for full-length two-way bus lanes on Denny via Better Bus Lanes campaign. She even secured majority support in City Counci for this with councilmembers Hollingsworth, Saka, Juarez, and Solomon as co-sponsors. This issue has even prompted responses from representatives in every level of local government, including County Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda and State Representative Julia Reed.

Unfortunately, SDOT seems content on allowing Route 8 buses to continue festering in traffic.  It recently announced it has decided to forgo bus lanes where they are most needed along Denny Way. This decision was predicated on a fundamentally flawed traffic study, which assumed that zero drivers would switch to taking transit or switch to alternate streets after bus lanes are installed or seek alternate routes. Despite the glaring error, the study did still include some incredibly insightful data, revealing that the Route 8 riders match drivers headed to Capitol Hill on Denny Way and even outnumber drivers headed to I-5 S when combined with pedestrians as shown below.

Continue reading “Denny Way Mode Share”

By KIAN NAEEMI

The Harborview Medical Center area is a bottleneck afflicted with crushing traffic. Multiple roads funnel traffic east into James Street, where traffic then struggles onto I-5. At the same time, bus routes 3 and 4 are trying to serve the same kind of trip on those roads, getting people to the Link Light rail and the Third Avenue busway, two major transit arteries which provide an alternative to I-5. These buses should be alleviating traffic (and to some extent they do) but they are unable to fix the traffic while in it. Better bus routing and transit priority improvements can make buses in the area much more effective at maneuvering through the James Street logjam.

The Seattle DOT should work with King County Metro to reroute routes 3/4 off the chronically clogged James St. onto Cherry St. (with a reverse bus lane), put bus lanes (for ambulance use as well) on 9th at Harbourview, and make Jefferson from 9th to Broadway a local only road. Heading eastbound, the reroute would result in: buses taking Cherry from Third Ave and taking a right on 9th to join the current routing for the rest of the route. This preserves the vital 9th and Jefferson stop serving Harborview. Here’s a map.

Continue reading “Speeding Up Routes 3 and 4”

By JASON LI

This is part 3 of a 3-part series on route 8. Part 1. Part 2.

Even if Denny Way is solved, frequency for the route is subpar, especially at night, where it drops to 20-30 minutes.

Headways	7-9am	9am-4pm	4-6pm	6-8pm	8-10pm	10pm-1am
Weekday	12 min	15 min	12 min	15 min	20 min	30 min
Saturday	15 min	15 min	15 min	15 min	30 min	30 min
Sunday	15 min	15 min	15 min	20 min	30 min	30 min

A table of Route 8’s headways

At peak, theoretical 12-minute headways are rarely met as Route 8’s schedule only allocates 60 minutes to go from Queen Anne to Mount Baker, but oftentimes this trip takes more than 90 minutes. This means buses don’t arrive at their base on time, resulting in cascading delays as buses start their next trip late. Riders are often left waiting 20 or even 30 minutes for their next bus, especially during periods of bad bus bunching.

However, once bus lanes are added, the opposite would happen as buses speed through the route but spend the time savings sitting idle at their base until their next scheduled departure. Metro must be ready to adjust schedules accordingly and increase frequency to more efficiently utilize their existing resources to meet the exploding demand that would accompany bus lanes. Luckily, it seems like they are working closely with SDOT and will be well-poised to respond immediately to maximize benefits from any infrastructure improvements.

At night, current frequencies make relying on Route 8 to get you home at night untenable, especially if making a transfer, and also leaves it wholly unable to serve evening events in Capitol Hill and Seattle Center. Additional service hours during these periods is not only relatively cheap given low traffic conditions, but also extremely effective in improving frequency. Only one additional round trip bus per hour is required to bring headways from 20 minutes to 15 minutes, and only two buses an hour are required to to bring headways from 30 minutes to 15 minutes.

Continue reading “Fix the L8: Long W8s”

By JASON LI

This is part 2 of a 3-part series on route 8. Part 1.

As the only arterial connecting Seattle’s second and third densest neighborhoods, Denny Way is one of the most important streets in the city. But as all locals know, it doesn’t work well for anybody right now, including drivers. It’s clear that something needs to change. That’s why the Fix the L8 campaign has been pushing for bus lanes in both directions along it since 2023 to ensure that this vital east-west connector can move as many people as possible. And it would help more than just Route 8 – Routes 1, 3, 13, 17, 24, 33, and RapidRide D also share Route 8’s headaches at Denny and 2nd.

Any bus lane in Seattle – especially on Denny Way – should include red paint and should be 24/7 to reduce confusion, boost compliance, and maximize effectiveness. Furthermore, while the bus lane would need to allow right turns for general traffic at most intersections, there are many redundant eastbound right turns at signalized intersections with high pedestrian volumes which should be restricted to minimize the impact of turning traffic. Specifically, 2nd Ave, Warren Pl, Broad St, Taylor Ave, Vine St, Bell St, Westlake Ave, Lenora St, and Fairview Ave can all be served by a turn immediately before those intersections. Denny and Westlake is especially problematic as extremely high pedestrian volumes mean each right turning car can delay the bus multiple light cycles.

Continue reading “Fix the L8: Redesigning Denny Way”

By JASON LI

This is part 1 of a 3-part series on route 8 and Denny Way. Part 2 will be Tuesday, part 3 Thursday.

Seattle needs more bus lanes. Everywhere.

We are in the middle of a worsening climate crisis, and Seattle’s contribution to it is largely driven by personal vehicles. According to Seattle’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory, transportation accounts for nearly 60% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the city. Unfortunately, that metric is only increasing. Commute Seattle’s 2024 survey results have city center commuters who drive alone outnumbering transit riders and growing rapidly.

Seattle’s transit mode share is only about half of what is was in 2019

It’s clear that Seattle needs to take drastic actions as soon as possible to reverse this trend to bring these numbers closer to pre-pandemic level, when transit riders outnumbered drivers 2:1. The most effective way to turn would-be drivers into transit riders is just to make taking transit faster than driving. Red paint is an extremely cheap, fast, and effective way to do so, especially when combined with signal changes to ensure buses can take full advantage of transit lanes.

Adding bus lanes is also particularly important as King County Metro faces a looming fiscal cliff. Faster and more reliable buses means that each of Metro’s service hours can go further and require less slack and redundancy. Additionally, we urge the county to prioritize service over fleet electrification, which is exacerbating funding issues. If electrification goals take precedence, then we risk a death spiral of worse service leading to fewer riders, leading to even more service cuts. If we continue down this path, we risk pushing even the most ardent of transit advocates to resort to owning and driving a personal vehicle.

King County Metro’s upcoming fiscal cliff threatens to result in a death spiral of service cuts

Continue reading “Fix the L8: Route 8 Bus Lanes”