Mayor Bruce Harrell signed legislation this week hoped to speed up construction of key light rail extensions to West Seattle and Ballard.
The changes are hoped to streamline paperwork and cut permit review times in half for Sound Transit projects.
Harrell issued an executive order calling for the streamlining earlier this year with six areas of coordination hoped to help cut down on delays: Continue reading
The start of summer will bring a weekend of transit challenges in Seattle as emergency repairs will shut down downtown light rail service starting Saturday.
Sound Transit says to expect reduced service in addition to no service between Capitol Hill and SoDo through the weekend due to the “emergent rail replacement” work: Continue reading
(Image: King County Metro)
Metro is planning to add buses with bigger, stronger barriers to protect drivers and sorting out how to retrofit its entire 1,400-coach fleet to add the enhanced protection, the county says.
89 buses with the stronger partitions have been ordered and King County Executive Shannon Braddock says she is committed to improved barriers across the entire Metro fleet. Continue reading
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. Continue reading
(Image: King County Metro)
Now Metro is getting serious about its restoration of fare enforcement. Starting May 31st, Metro security will begin issuing written warnings — and citations — as fare enforcement “fully resumes”:
For the past two months, Metro has focused on education and reminders of the requirement to pay proper fare. The initial results are promising. During the fare education phase in April and May, 76% of riders contacted had proof of payment. Fare Enforcement Officers provided information to the remaining riders on the expectation to pay the fare, reduced fare programs and the ways proof of payment can be shown.
CHS reported here in March as King County Metro restarted fare enforcement five years after suspending it during the pandemic. The soft-start is now over.
“We see riders are getting back into the habit of tapping their cards and paying at the farebox, which funds essential bus service in our communities,” Metro’s Chief Safety Officer Rebecca Frankhouser said in the announcement. “As we shift toward issuing warnings and potential citations, we are again reminding riders that there are free and reduced transit fares to ensure everyone can take transit.”
(Image: Sound Transit)
Thousands last weekend celebrated the opening of new light rail stations in Redmond as Sound Transit has now grown its Eastside line to ten stops. Connecting Seattle’s line across the lake via I-90 — and the Central District’s new Judkins Park Station — to join up with those new stations has been pushed back again to 2026.
Amid the Redmond celebrations, Sound Transit head Dow Constantine said this week that the latest time estimates have pushed plans for the 2 Line connecting from downtown through Judkins Park and across I-90 to “early 2026.” Continue reading
A worker helps install benches for the newly opened Metro stops (Image: WSDOT)
(Image: WSDOT)
Another key element of the $455.3 million project to widen 520 and lid the busy freeway through Montlake is now in place. King County Metro is now serving the Montlake Lid’s bus stop center.
Service on the lid began Saturday, Metro says, serving routes 43 to Capitol Hill, 48 to Central District and Mt Baker, 255 to Kirkland Transit Center and Totem Lake Transit Center, 271 to Bellevue and Issaquah, 542 to Redmond, and 556 to Bellevue and Issaquah:
Metro is excited to offer four new bus stops as part of the state’s major SR 520 Montlake Lid project, offering easier connections for riders traveling between the Central District, East Capitol Hill, Montlake and the Eastside.
Around 13,500 riders use these routes daily. The new space offers three grassy acres and new trail connections to the Arboretum, East Montlake Park and the Montlake neighborhood.
“Reopening service at Montlake is a big step forward for regional transit,” King County Executive Shannon Braddock said in a statement. “These new stops restore vital connections that have been missing since 2019. It’s a win for access, convenience and connectivity across our region.”
Buses haven’t directly served the 520/Montlake Blv interchange since 2019 through years of construction on the expansion and new lid.
The activation of the project’s transit element is another step forward in balancing the sea of motor vehicle traffic that flows across the lid every day. CHS reported here in late 2024 as a new 520 bike/walk bridge opened as a late element of the project, joining the multiple new traffic lanes that opened earlier in the year across the new lid’s reconfiguration of the busy intersection of freeway and city streets.
The 520 replacement effort is now in its third and final phase. CHS reported here on the start of construction on WSDOT’s $1.4 billion Roanoke Lid and Portage Bay Bridge projects currently planned to wrap up in 2031.
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(Image: King County Metro)
The restart of fare enforcement wasn’t the only big change for King County Metro this month. Metro says it is also rolling out a new “Advanced Service Management” strategy to improve service and eliminate “bus bunching” on the new RapidRide G line:
The key change is moving from scheduled service (meaning buses aimed to arrive at set times on a clock) to more evenly spaced or headway-based services (meaning buses arrive a set number of minutes apart). Reliability means regularly spaced bus service (that is, less “bus bunching”), reducing gaps between buses and ensuring that any issues that could lead to delays are identified and resolved quickly.
Metro says it developed its Advanced Service Management approach in a pilot last year on the RapidRide A and RapidRide F lines where “riders experienced smoother and more reliable service.” Continue reading
Five years later, King County Metro is ready to enforce payment by its riders again.
Beginning March 31st, drivers and Fare Enforcement Officers will again require riders to pay for their trips.
It is a soft re-start. “Friendly, verbal reminders will be given to riders who did not pay,” Metro says.
The change comes five years to the month of the start of the pandemic when Metro put fare enforcement on hold in the first weeks of the COVID-19 crisis. A week later, Metro suspended fares completely as it cut routes and watched ridership plummet. By that October, fares were reinstated but fare enforcement remained on hold.
The mothballing of enforcement coincided with ongoing efforts to address inequity in fare enforcement as Metro and the King County Sheriff’s Office were directed to develop alternative approaches.
The restarted enforcement will be fully in place beginning May 31st: Continue reading
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Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.
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You can thank a Seattle sales tax hike approved in 2020 for a coming boost to bus routes in the city. King County Metro has announced its spring service updates including an increase in weekend trips on Route 8 and the addition of two late night trips on weekends and holidays on the new RapidRide G line.
“Morning, noon and night, our transit operators are safely and reliably connecting our community to where they need to go every single day – 300,000 boardings each weekday and counting,” Metro General Manager Michelle Allison said in the announcement. “Our ridership reached nearly 90 million in 2024 and we’re welcoming more riders each day. As we celebrate Transit Appreciation Week, we’re so very grateful for our Metro employees who will expertly deliver these service changes, as well as our public transportation every day.”
The service changes going into effect starting March 29th include “hundreds of new weekend bus trips on key routes that are supported by the Seattle Transit Measure,” Metro says.
The measure approved by voters in November 2020 is funded by a 0.15% sales tax through early 2027 to support transit access and frequency citywide. The city has used the tax revenue to essentially purchase additional service from Metro on key routes. Continue reading
