West Seattle – Seattle Transit Blog

West Seattle / Downtown via SODO busway

May 4, 2026May 4, 2026 by Martin Pagel

Sound Transit still plans on building a new Link line to West Seattle. As Sound Transit struggles to find ways to fulfill the ST3 promises, there is a better option for West Seattle transit riders. With a relatively small investment in bus-based infrastructure, we could give riders in West Seattle the best of both worlds: a fast connection to Link and a fast, direct trip to downtown.

Connect the SODO Busway with the Spokane Street Viaduct

In 2012 SDOT evaluated various ways to connect West Seattle with downtown Seattle by bus. Since then they’ve added an eastbound ramp from the Spokane Street Viaduct to 4th Avenue South. This ramp could be leveraged to quickly connect to the SODO Busway. If this approach has significant delays, it would be relatively easy to build a second ramp just to the east of that one, directly connecting to the SODO Busway. The Spokane Street Viaduct already has a dedicated bus lane extending partially east of Highway 99. It would be trivial to extend the bus lane to the ramp at 4th or the new one. Buses would then travel in their own lane from West Seattle to downtown. Going the other direction, a new ramp could be built from the southbound busway to westbound viaduct. This would be similar to the one at First Avenue and relatively inexpensive. This work could be done much faster than a Link extension and the savings could be put immediately into running buses a lot more frequently to and within West Seattle.

Only Holgate and Lander Street cross the SODO Busway. ST3 proposed building overpasses to improve Link. The same would apply to the busway. The Holgate to Beacon Hill viaduct could be extended to cross the Link tracks and the busway. A similar link could be built for Lander between 4th and 6th Ave. This would also improve the reliability of Link and the other buses that use the busway. The toughest section for buses is probably between Stadium Station and CID. The report also considered various ways to improve that.

One advantage of this proposal is that the improvements could be iterative. The buses could run more often almost immediately. Southbound buses could use Lander Street and the First Ave ramp until the southbound busway-to-viaduct ramp is complete. Northbound buses could use the ramp to 4th Avenue South. Each improvement could happen bit by bit.

Reshaping Pigeon Point

August 16, 2024August 15, 2024 by Nathan Dickey

*The preferred route of the West Seattle Link Extension as presented to the Seattle Design Commission, by Sound Transit.*

On July 18, the Seattle Design Commission met with Sound Transit to review its proposed design (pdf) for the West Seattle Link Extension‘s high bridge over the Duwamish and its landing at Pigeon Point. Although the cable-stayed bridge might end up being the most visually impressive component of the project, Sound Transit also expects to radically reshape Pigeon Point during construction of the light rail extension.

SDOT seeking feedback on WSLE station street concepts

June 17, 2024June 14, 2024 by Nathan Dickey

The Seattle Department of Transportation is asking for feedback on draft design concepts it’s created for West Seattle Link Extension stations, seemingly based on the assumed alignment of an aerial station at Delridge, a retained-cut station at Avalon, and an underground station at Alaska Junction.

*Map of assumed station areas, courtesy of SDOT.*

The designs and notable concepts featured in the survey are summarized below.

In Defense of West Seattle Link

June 13, 2024December 15, 2025 by Nathan Dickey

Ever since the Sound Transit 3 ballot measure was being assembled, the West Seattle Link Extension has been a contentious project. Frank Chiachiere wrote in 2016: “not since the days of the Monorail has a rapid transit extension stirred up so much debate amongst the armchair planners.” Transit advocates have long known the project would be expensive and difficult, but for an extension that was strongly demanded by Seattle leaders and definitively approved by ST3 voters, why is it still so controversial? Let’s look at how we got here, starting with a brief history of how the current project came to be, and think about where we should be going.

This map from “The Rapid Transit Plan for the Metropolitan Seattle Area”, 1970, highlights the topographic difficulties facing any project to connect West Seattle to Downtown. Image clipped from a scan shared by Bruce Englehardt on Reddit.

West Seattle by Bus instead of Light Rail

June 7, 2024June 7, 2024 by Martin Pagel

Rather than building a light rail extension for West Seattle, how could Metro provide better transit to/from West Seattle with additional bus services? Forward Thrust had envisioned such decades ago.

Forward Thrust map
(black solid: rail black dotted: busway)

The rush to reach West Seattle

March 12, 2024March 11, 2024 by Martin Pagel

Last week Sound Transit revealed more details about three grandiose new stations in West Seattle, one hugely upgraded SODO station, and a big cable-stayed (“suspension”) bridge over the Duwamish. On Thursday the System Expansion Committee will discuss early land acquisitions. This seems to indicate that the Board takes approval of the extension for granted though the final EIS is not expected to be released until June. In the meantime, the target opening of the Ballard extension has been pushed out from 2035 to 2039, partially due to lack of funding. What would happen to land already acquired if the line would fail to obtain federal funding or the Board would decide to focus on Ballard instead? Are we making the right tradeoffs?

West Seattle and Burien Metro routes need improved reliability, or a new routing

August 6, 2019August 6, 2019 by Chad Newton

Buses waiting to turn onto South Dearborn Street (SounderBruce)

At 5 p.m. two Fridays ago I made the grave mistake a getting on a West Seattle bus at the 3^rd & Pike Street stop. See, I had to retrieve a child from summer camp by 6 p.m. As the bus crawled along the Columbia Street and 1^st Avenue South “temporary 2019” routing, the minutes ticked away rapidly, and at 5:52 p.m. the bus was reaching the 1^st & Dearborn stop, still in downtown Seattle.

To routinely spend one hour traversing downtown Seattle is not functional bus service, full stop; especially in a City where more downtown workers arrive by bus than any other mode. The Seattle DOT needs to significantly improve the transit pathway, or King County Metro needs to change the routing for Burien and West Seattle Metro bus routes that use Highway 99.

West Seattle – Ballard Link staggers towards the EIS

June 10, 2019June 10, 2019 by Frank Chiachiere

The original genius (or sin, if you prefer) of the legislation that created Sound Transit was that it yoked together the region’s high capacity transit needs. The suburbs and the cities had to work together to get what they wanted, or no one would get anything, like a municipal prisoner’s dilemma.

The West Seattle – Ballard link extension (“WSBLE” in Sound Transit’s lingo) is pushing that 25-year-old decision to its limits. Pierce and Snohomish County reps want WSBLE to be fast and cheap, lest it jeopardize the extensions to Tacoma and Everett (to some of them, WSBLE it isn’t part of the “spine,” so the whole thing is a kind of agency scope creep anyway). Seattle reps, meanwhile, are hearing an earful from their voters and maritime interests about elevated alignments at the termini. These reps also know that without the votes from Seattle’s west side neighborhoods, there might not have been enough support to get ST3 over the finish line to begin with, and certainly not enough money to support Snohomish’s speculative and expensive detour to Paine Field.

Like I said, yoked.

Broad Support for West Seattle and Salmon Bay Light Rail Tunnels

April 15, 2019April 15, 2019 by Peter Johnson

Troubled bridge over waters. Credit: King County

Letters from businesses, government agencies, and community groups show a citywide desire for the West Seattle and Ballard Link extensions to be almost entirely tunnels.

Troublingly for Sound Transit, businesses on the Duwamish Waterway made conflicting demands about where to build the bridge that will cross the river mouth, which means a costly legal fight to acquire right of way is likely.

The letters indicate that the ST3 project could be headed towards a higher cost than planned.

That cost could come from several scenarios that would drive expensive litigation and mitigation. The first is a contentious Duwamish crossing, with legal and condemnation battles fought against the Port, maritime businesses, and industrial concerns. The second is a similar fight over land and right of way with neighborhood groups and residents, if their tunneling preferences are ignored.

On the third hand, if the agency does follow public opinion and put trains underground, engineering costs could spike dramatically. In that scenario, Sound Transit would need to either find new sources of revenue (such as the City of Seattle or the Port), find significant cost savings (as occurred with U-Link), or some combination of both.

Follow these links for letters from stakeholders in businesses, government, and community groups. View a table here of various interests’ positions on specific elements of proposed alignments. Continue reading “Broad Support for West Seattle and Salmon Bay Light Rail Tunnels”

West Seattle and Burien Routes Add Stops in Pioneer Square

March 27, 2019March 27, 2019 by Tim Bond

With the Spring 2019 service change, routes 21X, 55, 56, 57, 113, 120, 121, 122, 123, 125, and C Line began serving two stops on 1st Ave. This will be the first time this century that [ed: some of these] southwest Seattle routes will connect directly to Pioneer Square. Both stops are centered on King Street, albeit at the furthest end of the intersection, with the northbound stop closer to Jackson and the southbound stop nearly at Dearborn.

The two stops add an important connection to routes that previously used the viaduct’s Columbia and Seneca ramps, making them an anomaly amongst the rest of the downtown routes as they did not serve any stops in or near Pioneer Square or the International District. With the viaduct out of commission, routes have been traveling along 1st Avenue South making a quick jog on Dearborn to access the new ramps to SR-99. Continue reading “West Seattle and Burien Routes Add Stops in Pioneer Square”