Uncategorized – Page 22 – Seattle Transit Blog

Ridership Patterns for RapidRide G Line

July 17, 2025July 16, 2025 by Michael Smith

King County Metro’s RapidRide G Line travels inbound from Madison Valley to downtown Seattle on Madison St. Outbound trips travel in the reverse direction. In May 2025, the G Line had 6,113 average weekday boardings.

The G Line launched in September 2024 and uses the first (and still only) center running bus lanes in King County. The route had a bumpy start as its 6 minute frequencies led to severe bus bunching. Over the past 10 months, these issues have largely been resolved and ridership has steadily increased each month.

Average Ridership Per Trip

The plots below show the average weekday ridership by stop in each direction, color-coded by time of day. For a more detailed breakdown of how the plots are set up, please refer to the How to Read the Plots section of the article discussing Route 70.

Average Weekday Ridership per G Line Trip: September 2024 to March 2025. “Inbound” is toward downtown Seattle; “Outbound” is toward Madison Valley. Click the plot to view at full-resolution in a new tab.

The G Line ridership patterns show a route that traverses dense neighborhoods with strong ridership all day. Some observations:

Midweek Roundup: beat the heat

July 16, 2025July 16, 2025 by Nathan Dickey

Transportation:

How to beat the heat by taking Metro to cooling centers (Metro Matters). Community Transit recommends a few transit-accessible boba tea shops (CT).
The Harrell administration quietly cancelled safety upgrades planned for Lake Washington Boulevard (Seattle Bike Blog). Additional coverage by The Urbanist.
WSDOT has successfully converted the M.V. Wenatchee in a plug-in hybrid, burning 25% less diesel in normal operations and 95% less diesel once shore power is installed (the Seattle Times, $)
Seattle’s main “micromobility” (e-scooter and e-bike rental) app company, Lime, reported a record 1 million rides in June 2025 (The Seattle Times, $). Ridership is up 84% over June 2024.
“Overbuilt” argues that the expansion of the US roadway network has exacted social and environmental costs that far outweigh the benefits (CityLab)

Accelerated Federal Way Opening

July 13, 2025July 14, 2025 by Alex Kvenvolden

In a surprising turn of events, Sound Transit CEO Dow Constantine announced Thursday that he now wants the agency to open the Federal Way Link Extension on the 1 Line as soon as possible, and move its opening ahead of the 2 Line’s long-delayed Cross-Lake Connection.

Link Light Rail train testing near Star Lake Station, April 2025 (photo by author)

Sunday Movie: Trams!

July 13, 2025July 13, 2025 by Mike Orr

A love letter to trams. (Not Just Bikes)

Trams in this sense mean surface light rail with transit-lane priority on arterials, like Link on MLK, or the MAX Blue Line outside downtown. Not stuck in car congestion or shunted away to freeways.

He makes some interesting counterarguments to many STB authors/commentators’ positions:

Race the L8

July 12, 2025July 11, 2025 by Michael Smith

On Thursday, Fix the L8 hosted a race between people walking, rolling, and dancing vs a Route 8 bus. The race was on Denny Way from Dexter Ave to Stewart St. On paper, this should be an easy win for Route 8 as its schedule indicates a 7 minute trip along this segment. Walking is estimated to take 13 minutes. Regular readers of the Blog will be familiar with the severe reliability issues that Route 8 endures. Jason Li recently wrote a 3-part series on the route: Route 8 Bus Lanes, Redesigning Denny Way, and Long W8s.

While the race was scheduled to start at 5pm, we waited for some racers that were on a Route 8 bus from Capitol Hill that was running 30 minutes behind schedule. While we waited, I spoke with a few people to learn about their experience with the route. One person mentioned they recently bought a scooter as Route 8 was too unreliable for their commute. Another mentioned they moved from Capitol Hill to South Lake Union to avoid taking Route 8. After a few introductory words from organizers Nick Sattele and Jason Li, the race kicked off as Metro bus 8047 crossed Dexter Ave at 5:29pm.

Friday Roundtable: Everett 4th Festival

July 11, 2025July 10, 2025 by Mike Orr

On the Fourth of July, Everett has a downtown parade, a festival at a waterfront park, fireworks in the evening — and two bus shuttles running every 5 minutes. I used it as an excuse to check out American Legion Memorial Park and the arboretum there in the afternoon.

Everett’s geography has some parallels with West Seattle. It forms a penninsula pointing north like Alki. Marine View Drive runs along the shore in a U shape. The Everett Marina and the naval station are on the west side like Fauntleroy. At the northern tip, Alverson Blvd runs south to American Legion Memorial Park and further to the northwest Everett residential area. From there, Colby Avenue goes south through the residential area to downtown Everett. The park is at the latitude of 1st Street, although there is no 1st Street. At 10th Street is the Everett Marina, the northern part of the residential area, and Everett Community College with a Washington State University Branch. Between 28th and 33rd Streets is downtown Everett. Everett Station is at the southeast corner of this.

This means the park and the marina are three miles away from Everett Station in different directions. The college is two miles from the station.

South Link Connections Phase 3 Proposal

July 10, 2025July 9, 2025 by Michael Smith

King County Metro has shared their revised South King County restructure proposal in preparation for Sound Transit’s Federal Way Link Extension (FWLE) opening in 2026. Metro is accepting feedback via a survey until August 31. Overall, this plan will introduce three new routes and two new Metro Flex areas, revise eight routes, and remove 13 routes (9 of which are currently suspended). The Blog has previously covered Phase 1 and Phase 2.

Midweek Roundup: Crosslake Update

July 9, 2025July 9, 2025 by Nathan Dickey

Local Transit News:

Sound Transit’s new blog series, Crosslake Update, will provide monthly check-ins on the 2 Line’s connection to Seattle (The Platform). Additional coverage by The Seattle Times ($). The opening across Lake Washington is reportedly tentatively scheduled for January 30 31, but may slip behind opening of the Federal Way Link Extension if more fixes are needed.
The driver of an SUV ran a red light and crashed into a pizzeria at 35th Ave NE and NE 55th St in Ravenna last week, hospitalizing three patrons (The Seattle Times, $). The driver was not arrested but SPD told the Times “the driver will be cited and may face significant financial penalties in civil court”. Which would have been more effective at preventing this incident: traffic cameras or bollards?
A second phase of safety improvements to Lake Washington Blvd seem stalled, despite SDOT promises to start construction in February (The Urbanist)

A post on the updated South Link Connections bus restructure proposal is in the works.

Sunday Movie: The 30% Housing-Cost Metric

July 6, 2025July 6, 2025 by Mike Orr

The metric that housing should cost 30% of income is not based on any scientific estimate of people’s total living expenses. (Radical Planning) Instead it has an arbitrary history, and has evolved to be detrimental to both affordable housing and mortgages.

This is an open thread.

Friday Roundtable: Metro Trolley Wire Map

July 4, 2025July 10, 2025 by Michael Smith

While most people looking at the sky today are hoping to see fireworks, I prefer to look at overhead trolleybus wires. The map below outlines the location of all trolleybus wires in Seattle. This dataset was created by King County and last updated in 2018. While the map has not been updated in 7 years, it is still mostly up to date. The biggest change not reflected in the map is the removal of trolley wire from Madison St from the RapidRide G Line construction. The official map and dataset is available here.

Many of the trolley bus routes that run today are immediately identifiable. Looking past the wires that are used by today’s routes, the map shows two other types of overhead wire: deprecated route wire and what I’m calling “utility wire”.