RapidRide G will continue to operate on Madison through the work but it turns out that more than signal timing and the line’s new “kiss the curb” coaches are in need of fine tuning.
The Seattle Times reported Monday morning that all 25 bus shelters and three station platforms along the newly launched $144 million line need to be repaired because of errors restricting wheelchair access.
Riders and CHS readers noted large orange steel panels placed at platforms at the route when the line began its first service last month. It turns out, the Seattle Department of Transportation placed the segments to raise buses the less than an inch required for the RapidRide wheelchair ramps to properly operate.
King County Metro says it is looking into solutions that could include making adjustments to the buses or lowering the cement platforms at eastbound stop 104 at Terry, eastbound stop 105 at Summit, and westbound 124 at the three-way intersection of Madison, Union, and 12th Ave.
UPDATE: Metro says the platform mistakes were made due to measurements not taking into account raised bumps added for blind and vision-impaired riders.
“Three center islands were slightly too high when you factor in the yellow strip with raised bumps which helps indicate where the edge of the platform is for people who are blind,” Metro said in a statement sent to CHS. “Because we caught this issue early, we were able to identify an effective short-term solution before service began.”
Meanwhile, the SDOT construction of the 25 shelters will also require new work. Metro says the line’s 25 bus shelters have issues with “paint thickness and color, incorrect welds, and holes within the frames.”
Metro says the repairs if left unaddressed “could lead to rust and other damage.”
The county and the city have yet to release statements on the issues and have not provided a cost or time estimate for the repairs.
KPFF served as the prime consultant and civil and structural engineer for the RapidRide G project with designs from Hewitt Architects. Jansen Construction served as the contractor.
SDOT says the line can continue to operate during the repairs and that ADA-required service will be maintained thanks to the steel plates and whatever solution is ultimately arrived at.
The disastrous execution of the shelters comes as SDOT celebrated a triumphant weekend with the unveiling of the city’s new Overlook Walk between downtown and the waterfront.
Meanwhile, Mayor Bruce Harrell is scheduled to attend the groundbreaking ceremony Tuesday for the new $128 million RapidRide J line serving Eastlake.
The RapidRide G line launched in September with ambitious public transit goals and plenty of hiccups around Madison’s new special coaches, dedicated lanes, center loading passenger islands, and coordinated signaling.
Another RapidRide G construction project is also in the works. CHS reported here on the “One Percent for Art” funded sculpture from Seattle artist Ben Zamora set to be installed at 14th and Madison.
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“Never time to do it right, always time to do it again”
It’s the SDOT way.
Wow. How do you take THIS long and spend THIS much money and still screw up the absolute basics of something as simple as a bus stop? I hope the company that did this is going to fix it at their cost.
Everyone in SDOT and King County Transit should be embarrassed. More waste of tax payer dollars from an inept organization with no accountability.
It’s truly mortifying how often our city leaders screw stuff up. From the Bertha debacle to the streetcar production eff-up to the bolt inserts on the Light rail, this city has made sloppy project management and poor workmanship into an art form.
But don’t worry! They’ll just tax our common enemy–homeowners–again so everyone can feel good about it.
I am not sure that these snafus on Madison are a particularly unique phenomenon; we’ve had our share of construction errors in Seattle going back to early years.
I wonder if the city is evaluating the vehicular exhaust generated by the now routine backups as drivers navigate the single vehicle lane. I feel a great deal of sympathy for the folks who live in the Eastlake neighborhood as SDOT is coming for the next.
One of the benefits of mass transit is the reduction of vehicular exhaust by virtue of reducing the number of cars on the road.
No one who is currently driving on this route is switching to this bus. I am eager to see the ridership numbers in a few months and how they compare to the old Madison/marion routes that were removed.
I took the G line for the first time today. Currently, I only go downtown about 3-4 times a year, so I won’t be taking this bus more than that. On the way to downtown, there were about five riders, and there were about six or seven of us in the way back. While it is nice that there are buses scheduled every six minutes, the trip was only about five minutes faster than the route 11. To me, this project seems designed for the pre-COVID way people worked/commuted and any minimal gains in ridership likely won’t even come close to paying back the pollution that was generated when they dug up and repaved Madison multiple times. It would have been better to just add more frequent trips to the 11 route.
Sucks the only reason to go downtown is for work.
I noticed that a number of perfectly-healthy older trees on Eastlake are marked for removal because of the upcoming RapidRide construction. Yet another negative consequence of this misguided plan.
Great thing trees are renewable then.
The future of public transportation as interpreted by the City of Seattle.
(the future will be paint, lots of paint)
Yeah, the Eastlake rapid ride construction will be a mess. And I don’t see why it is needed. The 70 runs pretty often
It’s a bike project disguised as Rapid Ride. Practically all the infrastructure added are bike lanes, all the benefit goes to bikes.
Ouch…Stuff happens.
As the City and their contractors built this line, the temporary (weeks/months) patches on the roads were incredibly poorly done.
I worked in Streets in the City of Redmond. These contractors would have been fired by any other city.
This little “barely an inch” snafu will not be the last issue I’m sure.
Our Street Department is in the same category as our Police Department. People need to be held accountable.
The City of Seattle, constantly striving for mediocrity in every department.
Yes indeed. Though I’d say mediocracy is a compliment considering their repeated ineptitude in all that they create around transit systems here. The costs of that financially and otherwise is boggling to witness as it just never seems to end and no change to get competency established in the teams/contractors.
Design is by Seattle based Hewitt Architects https://hewittseattle.com/project/madison-brt/
Looks like the typo originated on KPFF’s website…off by about an inch ;-)
Thanks. Meant to fix that!
City planning being ableist? Can’t say I’m shocked. So many sidewalks in this city are impassable for mobility impaired folks. They’ll spend millions of dollars and then not double check their math and we’re supposed to have faith that they won’t squander the money they get from all the fun ways they tax us.
good spot to mention that micromobility “solution” that’s resulted in Lime and Bird scooters and bikes blocking sidewalks, curb cuts, crossing signals, ramps, etc.. Somebody sure let these companies turn our pedestrian infrastructure into parking lots…
If we didn’t have Lime bikes, literally no one would use the bike lanes everywhere.
My only question is who will lose their jobs over this? Where is the accountability? If a general contractor delivered this level of rework-needed on a commercial construction project, there would be lawsuits threatened…
Had this $144 million project been a stand-alone ballot measure, it would have died when it should have died — before spending the $144 million. Voting NO on Proposition #1. SDoT has gotten itself so addicted to massively boondoggled voter levies the embarrassing failure of RapidRide G has become the norm, not the anomaly.
Seattle only paid for $22 million of it. The rest of the money came from the feds, the state, and Sound Transit.
It is far too early to claim that the project has failed; they haven’t even finished construction yet.
This rapid line G is nothing but a scheme to bamboozle Federal government’s hundreds of millions of dollars to fix the water and gas mains along a century-old boulevard.
It’s fine… Mission accomplished.
Those steel plates are a future lawsuit, they are slick when it rains and since Madison now has no room whatsoever for a bike lane, the bus lanes become the better lane for bikes. I have seen cars try to force riders to the side while trying to pass without going to far into the bus lane.
I have only seen a couple of buses having to slow down to allow for bikes, let’s hope this trend increases!
It is the only way to force a fix for what is a giant screw up of a transit plan.
Own the lane!
Then fine and confiscate the illegal bikes for riding on these bus only lanes. Cyclists put themselves in harms way then complain, sue, attack for their stupid decisions.
I live near Madison and use the G line all the time. It’s wonderful to walk out my door and always have a bus arriving or only a few minutes away. But I also agree that there do seek to have been some staggering incompetencies in the whole project