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Metro wants Hill feedback on bus route restructure before 2016 light rail start

Screen Shot 2015-10-05 at 10.45.42 AMcapitol-hill-frequency2Tuesday night brings a public hearing on Metro’s proposed “Link Connections” changes to optimize bus routes as light rail service to Capitol Hill and the University of Washington begins in early 2016.

For reasons only the King County Council know, the hearing is being held in one of the city’s least public transportation-friendly corners:

Attend the public hearing
Tuesday, Oct. 6
6:30 p.m. Open house
7:00 p.m. Public testimony
Mountaineers Club
7700 Sand Point Way NE, Seattle
Served by Metro routes 30, 74, and 75
Use Metro’s Trip Planner to plan your travel

We advise making the smartest transit plan of all — stay home and submit a well-crafted comment online.

CHS wrote about the early formation of the restructure here in the spring. Here is how Metro describes the summary of changes proposed for Capitol Hill and the Central District:Screen Shot 2015-10-05 at 10.45.17 AM

• Frequent connections to Capitol Hill Station on routes 8, 9X, 11, 49, and 60 and the First Hill Streetcar
• Improved frequency on routes 8, 11, 12, 48, and 49
• New, direct connection between Madison Park, and Capitol Hill Station (Route 11)
Frequent service in the Pike Street/Pine Street corridor on routes 10, 11, 47, and 49
• Splitting routes 8 and 48 to improve reliability
• All-day service on 19th Avenue E

Screen Shot 2015-10-05 at 10.45.24 AM

The full recommendation is detailed here.

Seattle Transit Blog says the proposal doesn’t do enough to clean up the system — but it’s a start:

Refusing to occasionally delete routes and repurpose them elsewhere creates a layer cake of past service decisions that leaves the network infrequent, overly complex, and hostile to riders. It creates a network that is decidedly less than the sum of its parts. It privileges the status quo to such an extent that any service decision is criticized except those that have already been made. We can do better, and this is the beginning of that process, not the end.

In any restructure, individual concerns and needs will tend to get the most voice time at public hearings. STB is asking its readers to comment to support the restructure as a starting point.

Coupled with this September’s Metro upgrades across Seattle, the opening of Capitol Hill Station might just make commuting off the Hill more bearable.

In the meantime, U-Link construction is nearly complete — and an even more important milestone has been reached. The twin tunnels now appear in services like Google Maps.

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7 Comments
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Ryan Packer
Ryan Packer
8 years ago

Yes, Metro is holding a meeting on expanding the frequent transit network *extremely far* outside the frequent transit network, during a football game.

Ryan on Summit
Ryan on Summit
8 years ago
Reply to  jseattle

Nope, I just completed destroyed my own credibility there, but the part about the meeting location still stands. Sand Point is a transit desert.

REg N
REg N
8 years ago

Yes, the location requires people on Capitol Hill to drive or take a cab which makes as much sense as the 8, 11, 12 and 43 restructure. I for one would attend a meeting at the Miller Center, but it appears that out King County Council must think everyone has a car.

May I suggest that the councilman be required to get to the meeting by bus!

Jeff Switzer, Metro Transit
Jeff Switzer, Metro Transit
8 years ago

UPDATE: We’ve added some buses to help riders get home after the Tuesday night hearing. We appreciate the face time on major changes, so hope to see you there! https://metrofutureblog.wordpress.com/2015/10/05/link-connections-metro-adds-trips-for-oct-6-king-county-council-night-hearing/

Brie Gyncild
Brie Gyncild
8 years ago

The location is a pain, but sending in a comment won’t have nearly the impact that showing up in person will. There’s huge resistance to this proposal on the King County Council and with the hearing at a transit-unfriendly location, the room will likely be packed with people who want the Council to reject the entire thing. This proposal isn’t perfect, but it moves us forward towards a more sensible, useful, frequent, and reliable bus system — one we’ve said we wanted for a long time. If you care about the future of transit in Seattle, please show up at the hearing. Several councilmembers are likely to base their votes on the crowd that shows up Tuesday evening.

Metro is running routes later to accommodate people attending the hearing (as noted in a comment above) and Seattle Subway is organizing rides to and from the hearing from downtown. And it’s just a few blocks off the Burke-Gilman, if you’re comfortable biking there.

EHS
EHS
8 years ago

A well-crafted email has barely a fraction the impact on elected officials that a speaking human being has. A fraction. If emails had impact, corporations would hire letter writers, not lobbyists.

As human beings, your council members will be vastly more influenced by seeing your face and hearing your honest opinion about transit than their staff maybe mentioning that they got a dozen letters. As a person looking to keep they’re influenced by voters putting in the effort to show up in person, because it shows you really care and will vote on the matter; an email just shows that you were bored at work.

If you care, show up.