By Matt Dowell

Jamie Guerriero loves and hates the 8.

“I live down in Lower Queen Anne, half a block away from the last stop,” he said about the often maligned bus route that links Seattle Center with Capitol Hill. “It’s so essential to get back up to the Hill.”

He takes the 8 up Denny two to three times per week to visit Capitol Hill friends and the farmer’s market and says the bus is either 5 minutes early or 15 minutes late all the time. And to take it during rush hour is hellish.

“For a 4:30 happy hour, I have to leave by 3:30,” he said.

Guerriero is car-less and is a big fan of the transit system in general. But the 8 has underperformed for the 13 years he’s lived in Seattle.

“It’s such a major route, but I get the feeling the Metro just doesn’t care about it.”

In fact, throughout Guerriero’s 13 years in town, King County Metro and SDOT have been working to improve the 8’s reliability. But it’s still falling short. Can it ever really be fixed?

This year, the Transit Riders Union and Central Seattle Greenways have renewed their “Fix the L8” campaign to get SDOT and Metro to address the issue.

“We’re on track for the least reliable summer we’ve ever had,” said Nick Sattele, a campaign organizer.

The campaign cites Metro data showing the 8 to be one of the most used bus routes in the city. But the route consistently fails to meet Metro’s 80% on-time performance goal. During rush hour last summer, its on-time rate dipped below 40%.

(Image: fixthel8.com)

In 2023, Fix the L8 finished a campaign that nudged SDOT to fund spot improvements along the route (paving, sidewalk repair, pedestrian ramps, signage). Those improvements are underway right now alongside a separate project, the Denny Way Paving Project., which will make “bus stop changes to improve transit travel time and reliability.”

SDOT also agreed to do a traffic analysis, which they’d wrap up and share with Fix the L8 in 2024. But the analysis hasn’t been finished.

Said Sattele, “In January of this year it became obvious that the project got delayed a lot. With the culmination of the delay and riders being pissed off, it became obvious we needed to do more.”

Fix the L8 is now asking for signatures on a new action letter.

“There’s been some turnover on King County Council, at SDOT, and on Seattle City Council, so this new action letter ensures that these newer leaders know we need them to step up to Fix the L8 and reminds the rest that we expect them to act.”

According to Jason Li, another campaign organizer, they’ll urge SDOT to “install two-way bus lanes along Denny Way and prioritize implementing the Denny / Olive Way transit improvements in the voter-approved 2024 Seattle Transportation Levy.”

They’ll also ask King County Metro to increase bus frequency along the corridor. On a minor note, they asked King County Metro to fix a software glitch that, for the last few weeks, has made navigation apps show zero buses running to Seattle Center on Saturdays.

Li and Sattele feel that the commitments SDOT and Metro have made thus far aren’t big enough. They told stories of 8 buses stuck in the river of personal vehicles inching toward I-5 after work or an event at Climate Pledge. The buses sit still for so long that their drivers relent and let riders out in the middle of the street. They say a bus lane is the only real fix.

But SDOT, so far, has not said they’re considering bus lanes all the way down Denny.

An SDOT spokesperson told CHS that they’re working on a longer-term project to create a new east-west bus pathway on Harrison and Mercer. It’s expected to be completed by 2028.

“This future pathway could provide alternative routing for transit through South Lake Union,” they said.

Until then, besides the spot improvements and analyses, they’re asking folks to carpool.

Metro and SDOT have implemented numerous approaches over the years to improve service to Route 8 riders. According to SDOT:

• In 2010, Metro eliminated several stops along the route to address bus bunching.
• In 2016, Metro split Route 8 to shorten the route and improve on-time performance. Today we have Route 8 and Route 106.
• In 2017-2018, SDOT and Metro implemented a series of measures including adding a transit-only lane from Fairview Ave to Stewart St, longer green light times where Denny Way meets 5th and 6th avenues, street channelization improvements, left turn restrictions, and parking removal.
• In 2021, as part of the Climate Pledge Arena street improvement requirements, transit lanes were installed on Queen Anne Avenue North and First Avenue North.
• In 2024, SDOT activated a “Don’t Block the Box” traffic safety camera at Denny Way and Stewart St / Yale St to enforce the law and issue citations when people illegally block crosswalks and intersections. This helps prevent gridlock and improve public safety and accessibility.
• In March 2025, King County Metro increased Route 8 weekend service by adding 8 trips a day on Saturdays and 33 trips a day on Sundays. This service increase was funded by the voter-approved Seattle Transit Measure.

The ongoing effort highlights both the importance of the transportation corridor and the pain it’s inflicted for a long time. It also highlights the problem’s difficulty. For Fix the L8, it’s bus lane or bust.

“Our campaign’s primary goal is a fast, frequent, and reliable east-west bus [travel] between Capitol Hill, SLU, Belltown, and Lower Queen Anne,” Sattele said. “Denny is prioritized in SDOT’s long range plan, hits more density, and is more direct [than Harrison] so we still need it to be fast and reliable.”

Maybe it’s that simple. But if it isn’t, perhaps he, SDOT, and Metro can find compromise in a more grassroots solution. One inspired by those who work every day in Denny’s glacial trenches.

“Sometimes you get an awesome driver,” said Guerriero, the frequent 8 rider. “You can tell right out of the gate if they’re going to be aggressive or not.”

“They pull out onto Denny by the gas station. If they pull out into traffic you get excited. They’ll go into the opposite lane around traffic. At Denny and Westlake by the Whole Foods, they pick people up in the second lane. The bus driver’s like, ‘I don’t care’.”

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