Connecting Shoreline’s light rail station at S 148th Street with Lake Forest Park, Kenmore, and Bothell, the S3 line is expected to significantly reduce travel times for riders along the State Route 522 corridor thanks to added transit signal priority, queue jumps, and some new business access and transit (BAT) lanes.

Paired with street improvements currently in progress along NE 145th Street by the City of Shoreline, transit times from Bothell to Shoreline are expected to drop significantly. Today, the trip can take more than an hour during times of peak morning congestion, but that should be cut to less than 40 minutes after the ribbon is cut.

“This project is going to mean faster, more reliable connections to light rail, to neighboring cities and opportunity throughout the region, while also strengthening our identity as a vibrant, connected community,” Kenmore Mayor Nigel Herbig said ahead of Friday’s ceremonial dirt tossing. “For more than a decade, Kenmore has been planning for high-capacity transit along SR 522, and today we’re going to see that vision come to reality.”

Bus frequency along the S3 line is expected to increase to every 10 minutes during peak commuting hours, while Sound Transit is set to maintain the existing 15-minute arrival time schedule of the existing 522 ST Express bus. Last year, Sound Transit awarded a $433 million contract to MV Transportation to operate Stride service, the first private operations contract awarded in the agency’s history.

Most of the route already includes existing business access and transit (BAT) lanes that will provide buses with dedicated travel space while still providing drivers with a space to turn right into driveways. Many of those stretches of BAT lane were built by local cities along the route, including Kenmore and Bothell, over the past few years, in anticipation of the S3’s eventual arrival. As part of this phase of construction, Sound Transit will build a northbound BAT lane through a 1.6-mile stretch of Lake Forest Park, along with targeted transit improvements elsewhere along the route and upgraded stations at stops.

A bumpy road in Lake Forest Park

The northbound BAT lane through Lake Forest Park has proven to be the most contentious element of the project, with an entire group stood up to push back on the roadway expansion and associated retaining wall necessary to make it happen. Local homeowners founded Citizens Organized to Rethink Expansion (CORE) in 2023 in an attempt to get Sound Transit to rethink its plans, opposing both the hardscape coming with the retaining wall and the agency’s plan to remove dozens of trees.

In response to those concerns, the Lake Forest Park Council passed emergency legislation requiring retaining walls to come with landscaping treatments, and added requirements relating to tree replacement. The ordeal illustrates the high level of control that local jurisdictions are able to impose on Sound Transit, despite the agency’s important role in building out the regional transit network and a growing understanding of the need to operate in a more cost effective manner.

After CORE co-founder Paula Goode was elected to the Lake Forest Park Council in 2023, the City has continued to push Sound Transit to eliminate the planned BAT lane between NE 153rd and 165th Street in favor of queue jumps. But Sound Transit hasn’t budged on its design, and support for getting on with Sound Transit’s plans appears to be popular with Lake Forest Park voters.

Last fall, incumbent Councilmember John Lebo lost his bid for reelection against Josh Rosenau, a founder of the advocacy group Lake Forest Park for Bus Rapid Transit, while incumbent Semra Riddle prevailed over her CORE-endorsed opponent, Bryce James. The Urbanist Elections Committee (on which I am a member) endorsed Rosenau and Riddle. Councilmember Tracy Furutani was the only incumbent in a contested race to prevail after being endorsed by CORE, with CORE endorsing a write-in candidate in another race because both candidates supported Sound Transit’s plans.

The S3 line is also being paired with broader street upgrades that will help connect riders with stops. A $7.2 million fund from Sound Transit is providing bike and pedestrian access improvements, including upgrades to 104th Avenue NE in Bothell, new sidewalks on NE 181st Street in Kenmore and Brookside Boulevard NE in Lake Forest Park, a bikeway on 28th Avenue NE in Shoreline, and expanded sidewalk/shared use path on 30th Avenue NE between Seattle and Shoreline.

All-in on all-electric battery buses

Despite the limited market for reliable zero-emission buses in the U.S., Sound Transit is all-in on the concept of using a fully electric fleet for all three Stride routes, with its new Canyon Park bus base being fully equipped to handle the task. The S3 will be served by 60-foot articulated buses, manufactured by China-based BYD, while the S1 and S2 will see double-decker electric buses made by the British manufacturer Alexander Dennis.

When Sound Transit awarded the contracts for these new bus purchases in 2023, there were some warning signs flashing when it came to other U.S. transit agency’s experiences with BYD. The Urbanist‘s Stephen Fesler noted some significant issues that transit operators were encountering when it came to BYD coaches in places like Albuquerque, Indianapolis, and Los Angeles. Three years later, those issues are still popping up, with LA Metro recently making the decision to ground its entire fleet of 40-foot BYD coaches operating on the J Line, just a few weeks after putting them in service this past December.

“The unfortunate news is that after about three weeks, we identified an issue with the BYD electric axle motor that required us to ground the fleet, and we’ve been evaluating that issue over the last few weeks, and are continuing to resolve that as quickly as we can with BYD,” Sean Miller, LA Metro’s Deputy Executive Director for Zero Emission Planning, told a Metro committee in mid-February.

“We continue to have challenges with BYD busses, including quality control response time for warranty support and the recent mechanical issues,” said Amy Romero, LA Metro’s Deputy Executive Director for Bus Operations.

Miller noted that many of the issues the BYD vehicles seem to be experiencing stem from being put in place on a freeway-running route. The coaches on the S3 are expected to be operated more stop-and-go than the S1 and S2 lines, which will primarily operate on I-405, a fact that could ultimately mean that Sound Transit experiences fewer issues than LA Metro. Though Miller’s comments might ultimately apply more broadly to Sound Transit’s efforts to operate all-electric on Stride.

“A lot of especially zero-emission busses aren’t intended to run at high speeds on a freeway for a long time. They’re not designed for that type of operating environment. There were indications that the electric axle motor may be experiencing accelerated wear due to those sustained high speeds,” Miller said. “We also identified a second issue with the axle motor bringing in water intrusion, and that could lead to a complete axle failure.”

Bus upgrades coming sooner

This fall, Sound Transit will switch the routing of the existing 522 bus to follow the future S3 line’s routing, cutting out the portion of the route that covers Lake City Way in Seattle and instead routing buses directly to the Shoreline South light rail station. With that change, King County Metro will implement two new bus routes, the 72 and 77, to cover that new gap in Lake City.

“This is a newer, shorter route will help people connect to light rail, and it will also allow us to expand the window of 15-minutes service by about an hour each day,” King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci noted Friday. “So a longer period of frequent service, which we know is the key to great transit. Frequency is freedom, right? So we’re going to be able to give riders a preview of the full benefits of the future service, and help them get used to new travel patterns.”

The post Sound Transit Breaks Ground on Stride S3 Bothell-to-Shoreline Bus Line first appeared on The Urbanist.

In addition to those four new members, Zahilay will make several reappointments, including King County Councilmember Pete von Reichbauer and Redmond Mayor Angela Birney. Auburn Mayor Nancy Backus, whose term on the board is expiring at the end of this year, will not be returning.

At least one board seat in Snohomish County remains up in the air, after Lynnwood Mayor Christine Frizzell lost her bid for reelection. Snohomish County Executive (and current board chair) Dave Somers will be tasked with making that appointment.

Staying on the board will be familiar faces including King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci, Seattle Councilmember Dan Strauss, and Renton Councilmember Ed Prince. All told, the 18 seats on the Sound Transit board are distributed proportionally across King, Pierce, and Snohomish County by population in the taxing district. Zahilay will be tasked with making decisions around the remaining board seats in King County in two years.

The decisions set to come in front of the new board are among the most pivotal faced in decades, as Sound Transit recalibrates its entire system expansion plan to account for a more than $30 billion shortfall that its financial plan faces through 2046.

By spring, the board will start to consider scenarios that give the agency a more sustainable path forward, in conjunction with cost savings measures that Sound Transit’s capital team have been developed that could save billions of dollars. By July, the board is set to adopt the first new update to the Sound Transit 3 (ST3) system plan since it was adopted in 2016.

Some of these appointments were expected. While not codified in law, the idea that the Seattle Mayor is automatically granted a seat on the Sound Transit board is a norm that goes back to the agency’s infancy. Katie Wilson is set to bring a unique perspective to the Sound Transit board room, as a transit rider who doesn’t own a car and as an organizer who has been involved in some of the region’s biggest transit funding discussions over the past few decades.

One of the biggest decisions that Wilson will face is whether to hold firm to the agency’s preferred alignment for the Ballard Link Extension project, which would bypass the centrally located Jackson Street transit hub in the Chinatown-International District (CID) and nix a Midtown station near the Seattle Central Library. Instead the proposal, which was revised from the original plan presented to voters following neighborhood pushback, puts stations instead near Pioneer Square Station and near the Uwajimaya parking lot.

Beyond the preferred alternative, the other CID station options still in the mix include a station at 4th Avenue S, which an agency study deemed “technically infeasible,” and a refined station close to 5th Avenue S designed to minimize impact on the surrounding area but which has nonetheless received significant pushback from neighborhood residents and CID advocates.

The last-minute decision to skip Jackson Street was a proposal put forward by Wilson’s predecessor Bruce Harrell, in coordination with current Sound Transit CEO Dow Constantine. While changing course at this point is feasible, it could come with a steep price tag by adding months of additional delay to the megaproject’s timeline.

“I think from a transit rider connectivity standpoint, [that station is] not my ideal solution,” Wilson told the International Examiner this month about the Uwajimaya-adjacent station proposal. “But if that ends up being the direction that things go… my goal would be to make that as great as possible, and to be working with organizations, nonprofits, businesses in the neighborhood, to realize the full potential of that site and the ways that It can help to anchor communities in the CID.”

Meanwhile Teresa Mosqueda, a West Seattle resident taking over the seat that Zahilay previously held on the board, has positioned herself as a champion of the West Seattle Link Extension. As a lower ridership segment that is somewhat disconnected from the rest of the system — at least until 2039 when Ballard Link opens — West Seattle Link is going to be a likely target for board members in other areas of the region seeking to prioritize their own projects.

At a “visioning forum” held last week that many took as a prelude for more engagement on the issue on the board, Mosqueda clearly signaled a willingness to study the idea of abandoning the station planned at Avalon Way in order to unlock both significant cost savings and reduce community impacts, like potential demolition of the West Seattle Health Club. While that move alone isn’t enough to solve the project’s affordability gap, that type of dealmaking is clearly going to be needed to maintain course toward a ribbon-cutting on the line.

As a councilmember who represents a district that includes Burien and parts of Tukwila, Mosqueda will also be charged with representing the South King subarea within the Sound Transit taxing district, along with new board members Thomas McLeod and Steffanie Fain, whose council district includes Tukwila along with Renton, Kent, Des Moines, SeaTac, and Normandy Park.

Fain doesn’t have a deep transit background and has never served in elected office before. During the campaign, she touted the endorsement of the county’s transit operator’s union, ATU 587, with a strong focus on transit safety investments, but did not make regional transit investments a major part of her campaign. Now she’ll become a pivotal vote to secure when it comes time to ensure that all of King County’s delegation is aligned.

McLeod, who has been serving as Tukwila Mayor since 2024 after being a member of the Tukwila City Council, has been a strong advocate for the completion of a 1 Line infill station near Boeing Access Road, close to Allentown. Included in plans since the line’s inception and specifically promised to voters in 2016, the project’s costs have ballooned to nearly $500 million — an incredibly high price tag for a single infill station.

Located in a sparsely populated industrial area, the station will generate only around 2,000 daily riders, according to agency modeling. Given the high cost and lower ridership projections, the pressure to once again delay the station will likely intensify next year. But now Tukwila has a direct advocate on the Sound Transit board to push for that station’s completion.

When the new board members get officially confirmed by the King County Council and seated, they’ll have little time to get acclimated before being faced with major decisions around the future of the transit system. By the end of 2026, Sound Transit expects to have an updated ST3 system plan, service guidelines network plan, regional transit long-range plan, and long- range financial plan all approved.

The post Wilson, Mosqueda, Fain, and McLeod Join Sound Transit Board first appeared on The Urbanist.

The report’s release comes at a time when the RapidRide program faces an uncertain future, with King County’s final 2026-2027 budget slashing the potential scope of the only RapidRide projects currently in planning, the K Line between Bellevue and Kirkland and the R Line though Seattle’s Rainier Valley.

Budget reductions reflect the worsening landscape of federal transit funding, on top of structural budget issues within King County Metro. Ultimately, they also show a de-prioritization of bus rapid transit projects at Washington State’s largest transit agency.

Girmay Zahilay, who was sworn in last week as King County Executive, has pledged to “fast track” the long-promised R Line during his term. But without addressing the issues that compound into the lengthy timelines that have become a feature of the RapidRide program as a whole, major transit upgrade projects will likely be few and far between, at least for now.

How a six-year project stretches to 10+

In 2018, King County Metro had six RapidRide projects in planning across the county, all of which were expected to open by early 2025. Only two of those lines, RapidRide H and G, are open now, with the R Line not expected to open until 2032 at the earliest. While some of the factors behind those delays — including the Covid-19 pandemic and a lengthy concrete workers’ strike — aren’t likely to repeat themselves, the report made it clear that RapidRide projects are vulnerable to long delays from a multitude of other causes.

“Despite employing a tactical approach that includes ongoing risk assessment and mitigation, RapidRide expansion projects have experienced multiple periods of schedule delay, not dissimilar to other infrastructure projects across the United States,” the report notes. “Identifying contributors to schedule delay and employing workable mitigation strategies are the responsibility of King County Metro, in coordination with jurisdictional partners, local utilities, contracted consultants and construction firms, and governing bodies where proposed legislation may be necessary.”

The report primarily looked at RapidRide projects developed by King County, including the H Line between Seattle and Burien that opened in 2023, and the I Line between Renton and Auburn that is set to start construction by the end of this year. But it did provide a glimpse at similar factors leading to delays on Seattle-led RapidRide projects, including the G Line (which had some very unique challenges when it came time to launch) and the under-construction J Line.

RapidRide H: initially planned for 2020 opening, actual opening date 2023

• Issues with station designs: 1 year delay
• Concrete workers’ strike: six-month delay
• Inaccurate as-built plan sets and inaccurate documentation of underground utilities: three-month delay

The biggest delay that impacted 2023’s H Line was a one-year delay that stemmed from King County’s “kit of parts” (KOP) station designs. Rolled out in 2019 and intended to streamline RapidRide construction by standardizing station designs, the kit of parts was supposed to save Metro time. But with the H Line being the first project the designs were implemented on, issues discovered with those designs — just as shovels were being brought out for the groundbreaking — added a significant amount of extra time.

“By May 2021, the H Line project team had identified specific issues with KOP design that would require correction prior to ordering and installing KOP for H Line stations, requiring delays,” the report reads. “The H Line team worked directly with the KOP fabricator to correct shelter gutter slope, wobble stabilization, lighting access, lighting power/angle, cladding joints, and map case dimensions, and to correct pylon key doors, electronics, and electrical box enclosures.”

The H Line also encountered an issue that has popped up again and again on RapidRide projects: conditions on the ground that differed from the contracted plans, including utility infrastructure that was found in unexpected places. Such issues delayed the H Line by three months, and later popped up on the G Line.

“In roadway construction projects, an understanding of existing capital improvements and underground utilities locations in the project corridor is essential to accurate project design and implementation,” the report states. “However, only after excavation has begun can the contractor and project team fully understand the extent of inaccuracies. Inaccurate as-built plan sets and inaccurate documentation of underground utilities locations that were identified throughout 2021 and 2022 excavation efforts [on the H Line] resulted in several months of redesigns and change orders.”

RapidRide I: initially planned for 2022 opening, current projected opening date 2027

• Delays getting to a baseline project cost estimate: 2 years of delay
• Design and permitting reviews by local jurisdictions: 1 year delay
• Property acquisition: 1 year delay
• Federal Transit Administration (FTA) grant coordination: 1 year delay

The RapidRide I, which will be the first line to operate fully outside the City of Seattle since the F Line in 2014, encountered even more delays than the H Line. It took two years longer than expected to simply get to a 30%, or “baseline” project estimate, partially (though not fully) because of Covid disruptions.

“Refinement of staffing capacities, establishment of predecessor bus route service, scoping for and contracting of consultant services, and COVID-19 pandemic impacts each contributed in smaller ways toward larger, cumulative delays between 2019’s assumptions and 2021’s estimates,” the report says. “The most significant of these factors were COVID-19 pandemic impacts, which contributed to and even introduced delay into some of the remaining factors.”

After getting to a new baseline, Metro ran into significant issues when it came to permitting its project with the cities of Renton, Auburn, and Kent, along with the Washington State Department of Transportation. “It became apparent throughout this process that Metro had underestimated the amount of time some jurisdictions would need to review design packages and the staff and management time it would require to resolve the quantity of comments toward completing design,” the report states.

Coordination with the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) also took much longer than expected, as this was the first time that Metro had been directly applying for grant funding through the agency’s Capital Investment Grant program, rather than relying on the City of Seattle to do that work. (The F and E lines received direct Congressional appropriation.)

Finally, Metro ran into significant headwinds fully completing the property acquisitions needed to get the I Line into the construction phase, with a small number of property owners refusing to negotiate. Earlier this year, The Urbanist covered an eleventh-hour request that Metro made to the King County Council to unlock its condemnation authority to speed things along, a move that was ultimately granted after considerable back-and-forth.

The report also underscores the role the staffing capacity at Metro can have when it comes to keeping these projects on track. Authors note a six-month delay to the J Line, due to Metro’s inability to coordinate with the SDOT team working on the project.

“Due to a high number of staffing vacancies at King County Metro, existing staffing levels have not always had capacity to respond to design reviews and related project needs on the schedule requested by SDOT. This includes key disciplines, including trolley infrastructure, where subject matter expertise is required and where consultant expertise is often limited. This resulted in multiple and often compounded delays in moving project milestones forward in design and construction phases, ultimately impacting the overall project delivery timeline.”

Lessons already learned

After ultimately being able to deliver the H and G Line projects, Metro has already adopted some internal reforms that are intended to keep projects on track and not succumb to the same sources of delay.

“As part of assessing lessons learned from the G Line and H Line design phases, Metro increased its investment in utilities conflict mapping as part of the I Line design phase. This was done in response to the large number of unanticipated utilities discoveries on the G Line and H Line,” the report notes. “The increased investment on the I Line allowed for full-depth and full-width potholing of future pole locations on the project. This was done to better assess the feasibility of the proposed pole location. The I Line is set to begin construction in the 2nd half of 2025 and the project team will be monitoring to see if there is the expected decrease in unanticipated utilities discoveries.”

Metro isn’t the only one applying these lessons — the Seattle Department of Transportation, which is handling work on the RapidRide J and likely will be taking the lead on RapidRide R construction, has also made some adjustments to how construction work is managed.

“We applied several key lessons from the RapidRide G Line to improve efficiency and reduce risk on the J Line. This includes more extensive advanced potholing—especially at pole locations—to minimize utility conflicts and avoid delays with long lead-time materials. We also held risk workshops early in the project to build a more resilient schedule with contingency for differing site conditions,” SDOT spokesperson Mariam Ali told The Urbanist this summer, as J Line construction was well underway.

Ali also noted that SDOT has implemented stronger requirements for its contractor construction schedules, including “labor-loaded scheduling to better account for crew availability” along with other reforms, including advance coordination with Metro on trolley wire de-energization.

Reforms on the table

The report offers some potential legislative fixes that could be implemented to reduce delays on future RapidRide projects, but its conclusions are fairly limited — confined to the types of RapidRide projects that the agency has done in the past. At the top of the list are more binding agreements between the local governments involved in RapidRide permitting, something that really would have reduced delays on a project like RapidRide I that needed buyoff from four separate governments, all with competing policy priorities.

“Metro recommends that when investing in RapidRide, Metro and its partner jurisdictions should enter into Intergovernmental Agreements (IGAs) that define project priorities, set mutual goals and commitments for both parties, help identify early in the project any significant risks, and can extend beyond fiscal year budgets,” the report states. “Such agreements would ideally be finalized prior to the start of the design phase, soon after the Locally Preferred Alternative (LPA) is adopted by the County Council, and the County Council would approve the agreement and the commitments made therein.”

Metro also proposes that the King County Council grant the agency the authority to acquire property “under the threat of condemnation.” That would give the agency an additional stick against property owners who are reluctant to negotiate with the County.

“Metro would still follow all federal, state, and local requirements for property acquisition and would use all reasonable efforts to acquire property rights through negotiated settlement,” the report notes. “However, the proposed ordinance would allow, but not require, Metro to use eminent domain, if necessary, after negotiations reached an impasse – an inability for both parties to agree to an outcome – without having to take each individual property to the County Council for review. The major difference would be in timing – granting the project the authority to use condemnation, if necessary, early in the project.”

Receiving condemnation authority without having to go to the legislative branch appears an unlikely outcome, as the process around I Line clearly illustrated. Not addressed is whether Metro can adjust RapidRide designs to minimize property acquisition, utilizing existing right of way instead. In part this is due to the requirements of FTA’s Small Starts grant program, where shelters and passenger information are requirements for every stop — but often opposition from local governments to reallocating road space means that private property becomes the fall back.

The future of RapidRide?

Tucked into the 2026-2027 budget approved by the King County Council earlier this month is a request for a follow up to this report, asking an even more salient question: what is the future of the RapidRide program? Given the fact that the program is clearly running on fumes, some change in strategy is likely warranted.

The proviso suggests a potential move beyond the corridor approach toward a systemwide one.

Specifically, it asks Metro to “identify opportunities to use a service-led planning approach that would prioritize capital investments in RapidRide or other very frequent service based on their ability to enhance speed, coordination, and convenience for a broad range of passengers, and to evaluate how targeted infrastructure improvements implemented systemwide could support fast, frequent, and reliable service without requiring full-scale corridor redevelopment, and to quantify the potential time and budget savings that could be achieved by implementing a more flexible, service-driven investment strategy.”

The fact that such a request made it into the budget is a hopeful sign, but it will ultimately fall to Executive Zahilay to establish what the RapidRide program’s next era will be. It’s possible the focus will stay on chasing federal dollars, likely leaving the program beholden to long timelines, or perhaps something new will emerge more focused on meeting riders sooner.

The post Why It Takes So Damn Long to Build a RapidRide Line first appeared on The Urbanist.

Houston-based MV Transportation contracts with public transit agencies around the US, including King County Metro’s Access paratransit service. The company also operates private shuttles, and has managed shuttle operations for major Puget Sound employers like Amazon and Microsoft.

Under the potential contract, MV would be responsible for providing start-up services on Stride starting next year, including testing the agency’s new battery-electric buses, which are expected to start arriving within the first quarter of 2026. Because the Bothell bus base from which those buses will operate is still under construction, the contract includes $5.7 million in funding for MV to set up a temporary storage and maintenance facility.

While Metro operators are represented by Amalgamated Transit Union Local 587, MV Transportation’s drivers are unionized under Teamsters Local 117. The Teamsters have recently been active pushing for higher wages and benefits. In late 2024, members voted to approve a strike against MV, but it appears a deal was struck before the strike occurred.

MV would also take over operations on all of the ST Express bus routes operating out Snohomish County, work that is currently handled by a subcontractor of local transit agency Community Transit.

To operate its Link light rail services and King County ST Express bus service, Sound Transit has traditionally contracted with King County Metro, rather than a private sector operator. Metro recently grappled with a labor shortage that hindered its ability to reliably provide service and boost frequencies, but a new three-year labor contract with a 17% raise approved in 2023 has helped stabilize the agency’s workforce.

“Under this new operating model, wherein the [contracted service provider] will run our Operations Control Center, schedule vehicle and operator shifts, drive and maintain the busses and dispatch service, Sound Transit will retain ownership of all fleet facilities and systems and manage the contractor’s work,” Lucien Bruno, Sound Transit’s Deputy Program Executive for BRT Operations, told the rider experience and operations committee. “During phase one, we will essentially be relying on the contracted service provider as consultants and leveraging their experience to perform critical startup activities to keep the program on schedule and ensure reliable operations.”

The highway-oriented Stride lines are set to operate 17 hours per day, running every 10 minutes during peak hours and 15 minutes off-peak. While those frequencies may draw riders at times of peak highway congestion, they likely won’t provide the same time of enticement to all-day users, especially given the fact that riders will spend their time waiting next to a noisy highway — sometimes directly in the median, as in the case of stations like NE 85th Street in Kirkland.

Sound Transit is on track to open two Stride lines in 2028: the S1 line between Burien and Bellevue, and the S3 line between Shoreline and Bothell. When those lines open, MV will begin operating them, along with ST Express bus service on other routes. In 2029, the third and final line between Lynnwood and Bellevue will open as the S2 line. According to the contract, MV will operate 164,000 annual platform hours for Stride and 80,500 annual platform hours for ST Express, with the ability for Sound Transit to tweak those service levels by 15% without having to renegotiate the contract. The contract terminates in 2032, with an option for three additional one-year options.

The contract will also allow ST to contract with MV to provide special bus services as needed, including planned shuttle service during the FIFA Men’s World Cup in June of 2026, and bus bridge service in the event of light rail disruptions.

Like the Sound Transit 3 light rail extensions, the Stride lines have been subject to both significant cost overruns and delays. The BRT projects were intended to be some of the quickest projects to implement following voter approval of the entire ST3 package in 2016, originally pledged to open in 2024.

However, many of the planned roadway upgrades associated with the Stride projects are either currently underway or headed toward construction now, delaying the openings. Since they’re closer to fruition, the Stride projects haven’t been a major part of the so-called “Enterprise Initiative” work intended to allow the agency to grapple with a $30 to $40 billion budget shortfall through 2046.

As new lines open, operations costs like the MV contract will ultimately take up a larger and larger share of Sound Transit’s expense sheet. The agency is framing the move toward a private operator as a major step forward.

“As we look ahead, our focus is on building long-term operational capacity, setting the foundation for a successful and sustainable launch of the Stride service. The service delivery operations team is genuinely excited about what’s coming,” Benjamin Marx, Sound Transit’s Acting Executive Director of Service Delivery Operation, said Thursday. “We’re already thinking beyond just opening day, preparing for people, processes and systems we’ll need to deliver safe, reliable and high quality service from day one. We’re also taking this opportunity to strengthen the agency’s overall operational expertise, building our internal capacity and direct oversight, leveraging the knowledge we gain from our other service lines.”

The post Sound Transit Selects Private Bus Operator for Stride BRT Network first appeared on The Urbanist.

“Just three weeks ago, the public learned that Seattle Department of Transportation was proposing to remove a block of bus lane right here on East Union Street.” Rinck said. “But riders and advocates mobilized. You showed up, you spoke up. And the message was clear, we need this. Transit matters. The public engagement was so overwhelming that SDOT reversed course. They kept the bus lane and the Route 2 stop, which we’re standing on right now, is slated to open soon. That fight to save the Union Street bus lane wasn’t just about one lane on one street. It was a wake up call. It showed us that there’s real energy, real passion, and real people power behind better transit in Seattle. So today, we’re building on that momentum.”

Among the groups backing the campaign were Transportation Choices Coalition, Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) 587, Transit Riders Union, Aurora Reimagined Coalition, Fix the L8, and Central Seattle Greenways. 

SDOT added the Route 2 bus lane as part of the RapidRide G Line project, which created a bus rapid transit (BRT) corridor along Madison Street. The G Line has attracted big ridership figures thanks to the fast, frequent, reliable service made possible by its own dedicated lanes. Arriving every six minutes, G Line buses served as the backdrop for the announcement of a citywide campaign to improve bus service, along with the 12th Avenue and Union Street bus stop for Route 2.

Noah Williams, a member of Seattle Transit Riders Union, pointed to the G Line as emblematic of the benefits many more riders should enjoy on their local routes.

“Transit riders deserve secure, safe, accessible, fast, frequent, rapid transit that meets their needs,” Williams said. “The G Line is a great example of that, and this technology — simple, bus lanes, transit signal priority, hybrid, articulated busses that zoom — is now readily accessible and used around the nation. It is clearly time for Seattle to roll out bus lanes on core corridors throughout them and speed up our busses so that Seattleites can keep moving and not get stuck in traffic.”

Advocates also saw broader societal benefits, like environmental stewardship and social cohesion.

“Busses are the backbone of Seattle’s transportation system,” Rinck said. “They connect our neighborhoods. They get people to work in school. They reduce traffic congestion, cut emissions, and they are the most affordable way to get thousands of our neighbors around town. Busses aren’t just transportation, they’re climate action and community connection. And when our busses work well, our entire city works better.”

The initial focus on the campaign is upgrading Aurora Avenue N, Denny Way, and Rainier Avenue S — key bus arteries and among the deadliest, most crash-prone streets in the city. These streets have long been priorities for transit advocates, but progress has been limited in building out effective bus lanes.

“The better bus lanes campaign today is focused on three of the most critical transit corridors in our city and frankly, in our entire state,” Rinck said. “The E Line, the Route 8, and the Route 7 are some of the busiest bus routes in Washington State. Aurora Avenue is home to our RapidRide E Line, currently the busiest bus route in the entire state of Washington, and we’re calling for permanent 24/7 bus lanes, making the temporary ones we have now a lasting commitment to riders.”

The campaign release stressed that bus lanes would aid in weathering coming transportation network challenge that could bring gridlock: “Bus lanes are a smart, affordable investment that will help Seattleites get around during the World Cup and continued impacts of Revive I-5.”

King County Metro is set to allocate 30,000 service hours in 2026 — funding that could be used to increase bus frequencies on other routes — just to account for additional traffic expected on streets due to the weekslong Revive I-5 highway construction closures. With bus lanes on more routes, those expenditures would likely be a lot less.

Greg Woodfill, president of ATU 587, said bus lanes are essential for buses staying on schedule and improving safety for all road users. He added that bus operators are firmly behind the campaign, and live the frustration of traffic-clogged streets firsthand, as he did in his career as a bus operator. And he noted the irony of RapidRide routes not having sufficient bus lanes.

“I drove when we didn’t have these [bus] lanes,” Woodfill said. “I drove this route too. I would have loved to have this. On Rainier Valley, the Route 7, is an equity issue. I’ve sat in traffic there. I’ve sat up on Aurora. Without dedicated bus lanes, there’s nothing rapid about RapidRide. It’s just taking the number on a bus, changing it to a letter, and changing its color.”

The campaign has suggested focusing Route 7 bus lanes additions in and around Mount Baker, calling for “bus reliability progress on Rainier Avenue in anticipation for RapidRide R around Mount Baker Station while promoting safety for all.” SDOT recently added a northbound stretch of bus lane for Route 7 between Columbia City and Mount Baker, but the bus lane disappears near I-90, where congestion is typically most acute. The 7 is set to become the RapidRide R Line, but that project has suffered consistent delays that illustrate it’s not a major priority for the City of Seattle, with the latest timeline now 2032 with a more meager scope than initially considered.

When it came to Route 8, the Better Bus Lanes campaign has echoed the Fix The L8’s campaign demands, calling for two-way bus lanes on Denny Way from Queen Anne Avenue to Stewart Street. The group recently popularized their bus lane plan with a “Race the L8” event that showed pedestrians could outrace the 8 — even if they were hopscotching, conga-lining, or juggling.

Jason Li, who co-leads the Fix The L8, spoke to the potential that could be unlocked with complete bus lanes on Denny Way.

“Bus lanes can revolutionize a corridor, and we’ve seen it happen before, including with the bus right behind us,” Li said. “Madison Street used to be just like Denny, a chronically congested arterial vital to both local and I-5 traffic, but bus lanes have completely revolutionized the corridor. Now we have replaced over 5,000 cars on our roads with a fleet of 13 buses, and we can do the same on Denny.”

Li sharply rebuked SDOT for ruling out those bus lanes in a traffic study he lambasted as inaccurate and flawed, both in a guest piece in The Urbanist and comments Wednesday.

“Commute Seattle surveys have shown time and time again that the number one reason why people choose to drive over taking transit is because driving is just so much faster,” Li said. “A bus lane would flip this on its head and allow a bus to cross Denny Way from Seattle Center to I-5 in under 10 minutes. That is over twice as fast as driving is today, and it would be sure to convince countless drivers to leave their cars at home and take the bus instead. Because after all, people don’t like sitting in traffic. They don’t like having to find and pay for parking. They only do it because it’s faster.”

That’s not what SDOT’s traffic study found — largely because it discounted the possibility of people not driving, even if congestion worsened massively.

“So it’s easy to imagine a scenario where ridership on Route 8 would double after a bus lane, and that would make Route 8 the highest ridership bus route in the entire state,” Li continued. “But SDOT’s decision to forego bus lanes completely ignores this, because when they did their traffic study on the impacts of a bus lane, they assumed that the number of drivers that would switch to taking the bus after the bus lane is installed would be zero. We know that’s not true.”

The campaign has suggested that SDOT should test out Denny Way bus lanes as a pilot program before ruling out the idea. “Piloting bus lanes along Denny Way allows the city to test new ways to ensure Route 8 can be as reliable as possible on one of our few east-west bus routes.”

Mayor Bruce Harrell’s name went unspoken during the press event, but a mayor’s cooperation will likely prove essential to the campaign meeting its goals, given Seattle’s strong mayor system. In some instances, progress expanding bus lanes has slowed under Harrell, with the City abandoning plans to extend Third Avenue bus lanes into Belltown, impacting 80,000 daily riders.

However, Harrell is facing a formidable challenge from Seattle Transit Riders Union leader Katie Wilson, who led the August primary by nearly 10 points. Wilson has made the need for swifter transit improvements a campaign issue. The Urbanist elections committee (on which I serve as one of 14 members) has endorsed Wilson and Rinck.

As it stands, Rinck has brought forward a Statement of Legislative Intent (SLI) to work with SDOT through the budget process to achieve the campaign’s goals. An ally in the mayor’s office would make the route ahead much smoother.

Safety upgrades

Campaign leaders also stressed safety improvements so bus riders do not have to risk their lives getting to and from bus stops. While a decade ago Seattle adopted a Vision Zero goal of ending traffic deaths by 2030, streets like Aurora and Rainier have continued to be hot spots for deadly crashes.

“We need expanded safe crossings, greater access to RapidRide E and automatic speed cameras south of Green Lake to move us toward Vision Zero,” Rinck added. “Aurora is one of our most dangerous streets and comprehensive safety improvements simply can’t wait.”

Carlo Alcantara, with the Aurora Reimagined Coalition, painted some stark traffic safety statistics.

“The RapidRide E line is a critical bus route that we depend on to connect and access our neighborhoods and our homes in North Seattle,” Alcantara said. “It runs primarily along Aurora Avenue N, which consistently ranks as one of Washington’s most dangerous roads. On average, a person is killed by a traffic collision on Aurora every three months, and three people have been killed this year so far. We only have four years left to meet our Vision Zero goals and our commitment to ending traffic deaths on Seattle, but we’re likely to see one more person killed on Aurora this year.”

Despite the terrible safety record, action to change Aurora Avenue has lacked urgency, with the City dragging its feet on a corridor plan despite a state grant to fund the work, with no clear timeline or clearly articulated vision for the road redesign. That lead Alcantara to declare the City was “failing” to reimagine Aurora in an op-ed in The Urbanist this summer.

Earlier this year, SDOT added 24/7 bus lanes on Aurora Avenue, but the Harrell Administration framed the change as a temporary intervention during “Revive I-5” freeway maintenance. Advocates are urging the City to make the change permanent and add pedestrian improvements and safety upgrades. Among suggested safety upgrades are automatic speed cameras south of Green Lake, with the state legislature recently explicitly authorizing cities to add speed cameras to state highways that run through their borders.

Funding bus improvements

Transit advocates often point out that the red paint needed to add bus lanes is cheap, but funding the broader corridor upgrades they have in mind may not come cheaply. Kirk Hovenkotter, executive director of Transportation Choices Coalition, pointed out the eight-year $1.55 billion Seattle Transportation Levy passed in 2024 came with a dedicated bus investment fund.

“Seattle’s busiest streets deserve the red carpet treatment,” Hovenkotter said. “Aurora, Rainier, and Denny are three of the busiest transit streets in the entire state. SDOT has already shown how much faster and more reliable busses can be when we prioritize them. We were proud to help lead the passage of the Seattle Transportation Levy, which invests over $150 million into speeding up our busses.”

That might be enough to fund improvements for the three highest priority bus routes, but long-term the broader push for bus upgrades will need dedicated funding — especially in an environment when the Trump Administration has hacked federal transit grants to Blue states close to zero. In fact, Trump has even killed grants that the Biden Administration had already approved, including more than $2 billion for Chicago’s subway and $18 billion for New York rail projects. The federal funding outlook, at least under this anti-transit administration, is bleak.

“Donald Trump is doing everything in his power, and countless things outside of his power, to move us back as a country, including rolling back transit projects,” Li and Sattele said in a joint Fix The L8 statement. “The last thing we need is for SDOT to do the same by tearing out a bus lane. It’s more important than ever that we keep pushing forward as a city, and that includes expanding our bus lanes.”

On the local front, Hovenkotter and Rinck noted that the Seattle Transit Measure renewal, due to be sent to voters next year, could be an opportunity to focus more investment on bus service. That transit measure has traditionally boosted bus service and transit priority investments, though in recent years funding has increasingly shifted to other priorities, like hiring the City’s permitting staff for Sound Transit 3.

Appealing to fiscal prudence, advocates pointed out transit service dollars go much further when busses are not stuck in gridlock, wasting the time of operators and riders alike.

“With all the billions of dollars, both past and future invested on public transit in our region, it’s important that we make decisions and take actions to improve its reliability and flow, not ones that would impede it,” Woodfill said.

For now, riders are left with an increasingly unreliable King County Metro bus network. Bus unreliability has hit a seven-year high, Nick Sattele with Central Seattle Greenways pointed out.

“This summer was the least reliable summer King County Metro has had since 2018,” Sattele said. “The E, 7, and 8, the routes we’re talking about, have the most riders in the city, and they’re the ones pushing that number down. They’re the reason why we have such bad unreliability.”

The post Rinck Launches ‘Better Bus Lanes’ Campaign with Transit Advocates first appeared on The Urbanist.

The move comes as Metro recalibrates its entire capital program in response to uncertainty over federal funding and higher-than-expected expenses, which have created a budget cliff that could hinder the agency down the road. By pivoting away from planned fleet electrification work, including the cancellation of a bus base retrofit in Tukwila, Metro now doesn’t expect to encounter significant budget shortfalls until the early 2030s.

Scaling back the only two RapidRide lines currently in planning raises major questions about the future of the overall RapidRide program, which is Metro’s main vehicle for delivering speed and reliability upgrades. RapidRide lines often rely on federal funding via Small Starts grants, which have increasingly dried up since the transit-averse Trump Administration took over.

K Line still tabbed for 2030

The K Line, the first RapidRide route planned on the Eastside in over a decade, had just taken a major milestone earlier this year when the County Council approved a locally-preferred alternative (LPA), laying out exactly what improvements were planned between Totem Lake and Eastgate. The K Line’s budget would shrink from $106 million to $85.3 million, a move that throws many of those improvements into question just months after the Kirkland and Bellevue City Councils had given their stamp of approval. Metro is still targeting a 2030 completion date for the K Line.

In getting agreement on that LPA, Metro planners had to thread the needle to get agreement from officials in both Bellevue and Kirkland. Creating dedicated space for transit in Downtown Bellevue proved a particularly thorny issue. In Kirkland, speeding up buses on 108th Avenue NE through the Houghton neighborhood has also been very contentious, with nearby residents and business owners concerned about impacts to their properties.

Now that the topic of project scope has been opened up again, those issues are back on the table — though the idea of shortening the line likely isn’t.

“Metro does not anticipate any changes to the approved alignment in the Locally Preferred Alternative (LPA) as a result of the budget reductions,” Metro spokesperson Jeff Switzer told The Urbanist. “However, Metro has not yet determined the details of how the proposed RapidRide K Line budget will affect the project scope. Metro will work with our partners to evaluate changes to the project scope to align with the new budget. The same high quality RapidRide experience – fast, frequent, and reliable service – will remain.”

“During the upcoming preliminary design phase, Metro will continue working closely with the Cities of Kirkland and Bellevue and the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to refine project elements, identify efficiencies, and ensure the K Line continues to meet RapidRide standards for speed, reliability, and customer experience,” Switzer continued.

R Line delayed again

The R Line, which would upgrade the Route 7 between Rainier Beach and Downtown Seattle, is much further behind the K Line in planning, with no locally-preferred alternative in sight. The $123 million budget Metro had been eyeing will drop to $91.2 million, slightly above the K Line’s budget.

According to the county’s budget summary, scope changes for the R Line will include “revisiting planned roadway reconfigurations, station locations, and signal upgrades in areas where SDOT [the Seattle Department of Transportation] has already implemented improvements.”

Unlike the K Line, the R Line is set to be delivered by the City of Seattle, and the agreement between the City and the County over how the R Line will move forward is still up in the air. SDOT has added bus only lanes to significant stretches of Rainier Avenue, along with improvements intended to improve pedestrian safety and connectivity. The City also plans a major maintenance overhaul of Rainier’s north segment as part of the newly approved Seattle Transportation Levy, but exactly how that intersects with the R Line remains unclear. With this budget, the R Line’s opening date has slipped from 2031 to 2032, the very tail end of the levy.

“Given the anticipated interlocal agreement (ILA) with SDOT, the scope, cost distribution, and timeline of the project will be refined in future budget cycles. At the time of the 2026-2027 proposed Budget to Council, Metro’s proposal to SDOT that SDOT design and deliver the R Line project remains under negotiation as part of the Metro/SDOT partnership agreement. However, Metro will remain financially responsible for its RapidRide elements, including station amenities, transit signal priority, and service-related infrastructure,” the budget notes.

The R Line’s 2032 timeline opens up the possibility of a more friendly environment for federal grants if a new administration takes over in 2029. Perhaps more federal help would allow R Line to expand its scope and budget once more.

Building the R Line had actually been included in Seattle’s 2015 transportation levy, until budget issues caused the city to step back from that commitment in 2020. The 7 is Metro’s second busiest bus route in the network, a fact that made it a prime candidate for speed and reliability improvements, but a 2032 opening date means that it would take nearly two decades to actually turn into a reality. Now, it looks like the line won’t be as robust as initially planned.

The role that SDOT will play in determining which scope changes get made to the R Line remains unclear. The Urbanist has reached out to the department for more details on how the city is approaching this, and will update this story when those details are provided.

The post Metro Scales Back Scope of RapidRide K, R Lines first appeared on The Urbanist.

Delaying electrification investments would push off the agency’s fiscal cliff, which had been looming before the end of the decade under a more aggressive electrification timeline.

Following the planned opening of Metro’s first all-electric bus base in Tukwila early next year, Metro had been planning to move onto other base overhauls, including a $448 million upgrade to nearby South Base Annex that would have increased charging capacity from 120 coaches to nearly 400. On that project’s heels was set to be a $176 million overhaul of SoDo’s Central Base, a project that would have resulted in significant rerouting for deadheading coaches at around the same time that Sound Transit was set to start construction on West Seattle Link close by.

Last year, a report from King County’s auditor noted significant risks that could come from moving ahead with South Base Annex, including a lack of contingency funds, geological issues, and permitting delays. “Delays in development of the South Annex Base may mean that Metro Transit will not have sufficient infrastructure to support its planned fleet of 337 battery-electric buses in fall of 2028, which could lead to service disruptions,” the report noted at the time.

Following that audit, King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci had requested a report on potential trade-offs between electrification work and service, work that likely played a big role in informing this year’s budget proposal. That report is set to be released in the coming days.

With this proposal, Metro now doesn’t expect to fully decarbonize its operations until the mid-2040s, and will draw out its ambitious schedule for major bus base overhauls in favor of slower retrofitting, along with additional small-scale projects like the expansion of the existing trolleybus fleet. Metro’s trolleybuses have long provided zero-emission service, but Metro’s electrification plans have not leaned heavily on them.

Rather than going all-in on battery electric buses (BEBs), Metro will continue with a more diversified set of bus purchases, acquiring BEBs but also the more reliable hybrid diesel-electric buses that can be depended on to deliver service on Metro’s workhorse routes. In December, The Urbanist noted such an electrification strategy reset may be coming due to mounting obstacles.

“Our new approach is to go incrementally, to retrofit the base according to what the technology can provide from a service perspective. And so both that helps with cost and it also preserves continuity of service for the riders,” Metro General Manager Michelle Allison told The Urbanist. “Before, we had assumed you would shut down a whole base, move that service elsewhere and bring it online.”

A full recalibration of Metro’s electrification program is a stark illustration of the trade-offs transit agencies across the country face in managing ambitious climate reduction targets in the face of rising labor and project costs, limited U.S. electric coach manufacturers, and increased federal uncertainty around transit funding.

Despite the fact that Metro has been experimenting with all-electric coaches for nearly a decade, the existing fleet remains small. Not all trial runs have gone well. Metro’s retired its first set of Proterra battery buses after just a few short years of service, following that company’s bankruptcy two years ago.

“We’re continuing to keep focused on trying to make sure we have a really good, sustainable service. But for now, it doesn’t make sense to keep pushing on that date when we just know, realistically, we need technology to catch up and supply to catch up,” Braddock told The Urbanist following her budget speech.

While pivoting away from electrification work, Metro plans to continue ramping up service over the course of this budget cycle, restoring 334,000 annual service hours that had been suspended during the Covid-19 pandemic. That’s on top of additional service hours planned for the county’s next two RapidRide lines, the I Line between Renton and Auburn and the J Line between Downtown Seattle and the University District. Those 334,000 hours are more than had originally been planned, with fewer service hours now needed to account for reroutes during base electrification work.

“We know there’s this balance between new technology and service, and what we really want to do is create a zero-emissions program that’s service driven,” Allison said. “Being able to invest those service hours and get those hours out on the street, knowing that the technology is going to lag a little bit [more] than what we assumed, is where we are now. With the new program, we’re not going to do 100% base conversions all at once. We’re going to do it incrementally as technology lags, so it can be service preserving as well.”

The revision in Metro’s plans doesn’t mean a fiscal cliff is fully eliminated, just pushed out by a few years, as the agency is able to hold onto more of its fiscal reserves even as costs outpace the revenues coming in. For a true fix, additional funding is going to be needed to match the planned pace of service expansion that is ultimately the bare minimum needed to sustain a growing region.

“Metro’s current revenue sources are inadequate to fund the current level of operations and an ambitious capital proposal in the longer run,” the Executive’s budget book notes. “By 2031 Metro will exhaust its undesignated fund balance and will either have to reduce spending or start to use reserves set aside under current policies.”

King County is currently not utilizing any of the 0.3% sales tax authority available to fund transportation, via the King County Transportation District. With Seattle’s counterpart sales tax measure set to come up for renewal in late 2026, many transit advocates had been pushing to take the city-controlled measure countywide, but all signs point to that opportunity not coming together, with the King County Council instead only considering a 0.05% sales tax for Metro that could be approved by a council vote.

With cities around the county also approving 0.1% sales tax measures to fund public safety investments thanks to a new change in state law, sales tax fatigue is likely to contribute to pressure against expanding use of the transportation district.

The King County Council had been weighing a countywide transit measure in 2020, but the Covid pandemic led them to shelve plans. In the intervening years, a labor shortage among bus operators and mechanics (also tied to the pandemic) complicated plans to expand service. Nonetheless, Seattle’s overwhelming success passing its bus funding measure in 2020 suggests an electoral path for a countywide measure.

For now, Metro’s change in approach on electrification work will turn down the financial pressure and allow Washington’s largest transit agency to focus on its core mission: providing transit service.

The post King County Metro Delays Planned Electrification Work, Pushing Out Fiscal Cliff first appeared on The Urbanist.

The infamous Route 8 is King County Metro’s slowest and least reliable bus in its entire system, stymied by I-5 traffic that turns Denny Way into a glorified parking lot. Riders have been calling it the “L8” (late) for decades and even raced it in July, outpacing it while walking, jumproping, leapfrogging, conga-lining, dancing the cha-cha-slide, and more. The Fix the L8 campaign has long been asking for a bus lane to be painted in each direction of Denny Way to fix this, with thousands of emails sent in support.

However, the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) has recently ruled bus lanes out, saying it would lead to untenable congestion. This was surprising as bus lanes are proven to reduce congestion by incentivizing drivers to take transit with a faster, cheaper, and calmer commute. So, we asked SDOT: “How many drivers did your study assume would switch to taking the bus?” 

Their answer: Zero.

This analysis is completely absurd and cannot be used to guide policy. Route 8 is a vital connector in the city as the only east-west transit connection between downtown and the ship canal. As a testament to this, it still manages to be one of the top-ten busiest bus routes in Seattle with 7,000 daily riders despite also being the least reliable. 

If a bus lane allowed buses to average 10 mph, then they could cross Denny Way from Seattle Center to I-5 in just six minutes. That’s over twice as fast as driving today and would be certain to attract hoards of drivers to leave their cars at home and take the bus instead. After all, Commute Seattle surveys have consistently shown that the number one reason why people drive over taking transit is time.

Buses are so much more space efficient than cars that this exodus of drivers would more than make up for the loss of a general travel lane by painting it red. In fact, a single Route 8 bus could fit the driver of every car in an entire lane full of traffic along Denny Way. This would leave the remaining lane wide open for I-5 traffic, whose main bottleneck would still be the light to get on I-5.

SDOT’s traffic model ignored all of this and assumed that drivers heading to Capitol Hill would rather spend an extra 34 minutes in traffic than set foot on a bus that would be faster than their current commute. SDOT Director Adiam Emery and Mayor Bruce Harrell have repeatedly claimed that Seattle is “transit first,” so why do we think people will put transit last?

SDOT’s announcement of the study results claim that they “encourage transit use,” but they completely disregarded the number one way to do so. Why did we spend nearly two years of time and taxpayer money studying a bus lane SDOT thought nobody would use? What was the point of a transit analysis that ignores transit? How did leadership approve a study under such distorting assumptions? There’s such a flagrant lack of due diligence that it makes me wonder if this study was intentionally designed to scuttle bus lanes on Denny and suppress public support for them.

We’re not alone in these concerns as Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck has called for a formal inquiry into how this decision was made, and the Seattle Transit Advisory Board described the study as “theater from SDOT and the Mayor’s office in claiming to take a closer look at improving Route 8.”

This morning @councilmember-amr.bsky.social called for the council's transportation committee to pursue some type of formal inquiry into the decision to rule out additional bus lanes on Denny Way's most congested blocks to get the Route 8 out of traffic.

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— Ryan Packer (@typewriteralley.bsky.social) September 16, 2025 at 11:33 AM

It’s not like SDOT doesn’t know how to account for mode shift either. Their 2015 Madison Bus Rapid Transit study did so and found that curbside bus lanes, like the ones proposed for Denny Way, would actually improve travel times for westbound drivers. There is no reason that SDOT could not have performed a similar analysis for Denny as it has extremely similar traffic conditions to Madison at the time: a chronically congested arterial vital to both local and I-5 traffic.

If SDOT had squandered its Madison study the same way that it did for Denny, then this visionary project would have been dead in the water and Madison would still be just like Denny Way. Instead, the study allowed them to be ambitious for the RapidRide G Line, which can only be described as a massive success. Community members love it so much that they are even bringing drivers baked treats, noodles and egg rolls at their rest stop.

The G Line finally gave transit riders a fast and reliable commute while enticing thousands of people in cars to hop on board a bus. This has nearly quadrupled the ridership of the previous Route 12, with no signs of slowing down. If we applied this same multiplier to Route 8, then it would become the highest ridership bus route in Seattle by a factor of two.

So what solutions did SDOT propose in their announcement? Their main tactic is to mitigate I-5 traffic by installing five new signs for “improved routing and wayfinding,” which will be laughably ineffective. It’s not all bad though as they do plan to add some new bus lanes next year, but only on Queen Anne Avenue south of John and eastbound on Denny Way west of 2nd Avenue. This is extremely welcome, especially if they can be installed before the World Cup’s Fan Zone at Seattle Center, but they unfortunately are nowhere near the most congested section where we outwalked Route 8.

SDOT is also blocking right turns from northbound Westlake Avenue to eastbound Denny, which will be transformative for the C Line, Route 40, and SLU Streetcar, but will only have marginal impacts on Route 8.

The inconsistency in their reasoning also extends to their commentary on the study’s results. SDOT expressed concerns that delays on Denny could have severe consequences on surrounding streets as drivers seek alternative routes, but SDOT’s proposed signage would promote those alternatives. How did they not consider the alternative of taking a bus that would be flying past traffic?

It is shameful that SDOT is essentially saying that the best use for Denny Way is as a parking lot and this fails to consider what we’d gain by making a different choice. Fewer cars jammed onto Denny Way would also make the street more pleasant for people walking — and the many thousands living in new homes that have been added along Denny over the last decade.

The eastbound bus lane that SDOT studied doesn’t make sense either. It only extended as far west as 9th Avenue, and SDOT claimed that buses would get snarled in traffic leading up to the bus lane. If we’re going to extend the existing eastbound bus lane, why would we stop at 9th instead of connecting to the one planned at 2nd?

SDOT is also worried that even after reaching the bus lane, buses would be delayed due to “continuing to encounter heavy traffic at Westlake, Fairview, and nearby streets.” We question where this “heavy traffic” would come from if there is a bus lane in place. If it’s coming from turning traffic, we’ve already detailed how the impacts of turning traffic can be mitigated on those intersections by blocking turns at controlled intersections in favor of a turn immediately before them. These alternate routes don’t have traffic signals, improving traffic flow, and have much shorter crossings with curb bulbs, which greatly increase pedestrian safety and comfort.

Cars are responsible for nearly two-thirds of Seattle’s emissions and traffic congestion is worsening as the region grows. The answer to both those problems is to provide fast and reliable alternatives to driving. Seattle has slowly been making progress towards this, and as a result, car ownership rates have dropped by 10% between 2017 and 2023. But that momentum will stall if the department continues to assume that drivers are inextricably tied to their vehicles and treat non-drivers as an afterthought. SDOT must revisit their traffic study while breaking that assumption, if they ever want to learn how to make a bus faster than jumping rope.

If you agree, please consider sending an email to our local leaders.

The post Op-Ed: SDOT’s Flawed Analysis of Denny Bus Lanes Is Political Theater first appeared on The Urbanist.

Monday’s unanimous vote in the transportation, economy, and environment committee represented a scaled-back version of the initial broader condemnation proposal. After initial consideration of 25 potential condemnations in July, several councilmembers had raised concerns over the number being that high, even as county officials provided assurances that there would likely be more settlements reached before condemnation authority was actually used. At that time, there were also issues raised around what public notice had been provided to impacted property owners, with several showing up directly at a council meeting with concerns.

Condemnation is generally used as a tool of last resort when local governments need to acquire property, but direct negotiations reach a full impasse. By the time of yesterday’s committee vote, the number of properties included had been whittled down to just 10. Of the 15 properties that were taken off the list was the White River Buddhist Temple in Auburn, where Metro remains in negotiations around potential modifications that would lessen the impact on a religious institution. Of the other nine remaining properties, one more is in Auburn, with the other eight in Kent.

Overall, the I Line is set to require 110 individual property acquisitions and construction easements, primarily to make room for upgraded transit stations that include rider amenities like off-board payment infrastructure, seating and lighting, and real-time information signs.

Without approving the condemnations, the I Line risks running behind schedule, which could put its federal funding at risk. The $80 million grant Metro received from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), transmitted in the final days of the Biden Administration, makes up nearly half of the full project’s cost. Initially scheduled to be delivered in 2023, the I Line has already been subjected to numerous delays during its design phase. As a result, its targeted opening has slipped to 2027.

“Condemnation authority is not something that we take lightly, and even though this ordinance does not involve the full taking of any property and does not impact any buildings, I think it behooves us to ensure that the process itself is transparent, and that legislation is narrow as possible, while still enabling Metro and the amazing work that Metro is doing to move forward with this important project for all of those in affected in South King County,” Councilmember Sarah Perry said Monday.

Among the councilmembers raising questions about the idea of potentially condemning 25 properties was Rod Dembowski, who had drafted an amendment for Monday’s meeting requiring Metro to give the council 60 days to review any condemnations before proceedings actually moved forward, allowing time for that authority to be repealed on an individual basis. A real estate attorney by training, Dembowski was a partner at Foster Pepper and chaired their real estate litigation practice group before being appointed to the King County Council in 2013 — filling a vacancy created by Bob Ferguson winning higher office.

Despite his earlier concerns, Dembowski withdrew his amendment at the meeting, seemingly placated by the reduction in the number of properties included.

“My concern with this legislation was its breadth, but more importantly, that there was no indication that the dozens of property owners had received any notice that the Executive transmitted a condemnation ordinance to the council and that we would be considering it and voting on it, and no notice to the affected property owners,” Dembowski said. “I hope this will not happen again. If we are going to be considering condemnation of people’s property, they ought to have notice early, not late or not at all. And so I hope we’ll do better in the future.”

The RapidRide I will be King County’s first bus rapid transit line to be built fully outside the City of Seattle since the F Line in 2014. It will serve an area of the county that saw remarkably transit strong ridership throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.

By upgrading the existing Route 160 with dedicated transit lanes and signal priority at intersections, Metro expects to save riders going from one end of the corridor to the other around 8 minutes by 2040, as traffic congestion levels increase. That’s a significant savings, but for such a long route it’s less dramatic than the time savings seen in other RapidRide corridors, like Madison Street’s G Line.

With around 5,500 riders currently using the 160 every weekday, Metro expects to see ridership increase by around 50% by 2040, to 8,500 daily riders.

“We are trying to balance very real rights and very real needs,” Councilmember Claudia Balducci said. “The property rights of the property owners that are being impacted are very real and need to be respected and treated fairly. The people who are going to ride this line when we build it to the standards that we commit to for RapidRides, where it is fast, frequent, reliable, especially for people, many people who ride our RapidRides rely on our busses for their everyday transportation, and so […] not watering down the line is very important, a very important interest here.”

The full county council is set to vote to approve the condemnation authority in early October.

The I Line is set to open within a few months of the City of Seattle-led RapidRide J, between Downtown Seattle and the University District. After the I and J, King County Metro doesn’t expect to open another RapidRide line until the Eastside’s K Line in 2030 and the R Line upgrade of Rainier Valley’s Route 7 as soon as 2031. Beyond that, RapidRide expansion plans remain murky and threatened by Metro’s looming financial crunch.

The post King County Council Unsnags RapidRide I Line After Property Disputes first appeared on The Urbanist.

The work ahead represents what is likely to be the most important 18 months for Sound Transit since the early 2000s, when the fledgling regional transit system was rescued from the brink of financial ruin. Among the issues set to be put on the table are major elements of the planned Sound Transit 3 (ST3) expansion plan, including the necessity of a second, regionally-funded light rail tunnel under downtown Seattle, and the scope of other planned extensions.

The reset has been signaled for months, with CEO Dow Constantine briefing board members on the so-called “Enterprise Initiative” at their annual retreat this spring. Unlike past program realignments, including the one implemented in 2021 in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, this reset is set to tackle the entire agency, including its growing operations division and the way that Sound Transit structures its finances.

The projected financial gap announced this week, which could approach 25% of Sound Transit’s entire financial plan, includes a $20-$30 billion shortfall impacting its system expansion projects, on top of a hit of $4 to $5 billion in decreased revenues. It also includes a $5 billion expense the agency will need to grapple with when it comes to increased service delivery costs. Those extra service dollars include new train cars, along with projects required to make the system more resilient, including a badly needed new crossover track in downtown Seattle to minimize service disruptions.

The $20-$30 billion capital funding shortfall is the first comprehensive look at the financial health of the 2016 ST3 plan, and comes on the heels of a public announcement last year that the first major ST3 project to start planning — West Seattle Link — has seen costs escalate by around $3 billion. While scope and schedule changes are likely on the table for even bigger ST3 projects, including Everett, Tacoma Dome, and Ballard Link, it’s too early to know how those projects might be adjusted in order to move forward within Sound Transit’s budget.

“We have in the past dealt with these challenges by pausing all our work, by cutting lines, by using really just these blunt instruments. We want to do better,” Constantine told reporters in a briefing ahead of Thursday’s board meeting. “The Enterprise Initiative is really the framework that allows us to go beyond what we did before, which is just focus on capital and just focus on scope and schedule instead to do the hard work, the innovative work, the careful, meticulous work to save money, to have a better product, to reduce construction impacts, and ultimately, to have a balanced long range financial plan and move forward building a system that people asked us for.”

The motion approved Thursday calls for Sound Transit to update its System Plan, Long Range Plan, and its Long Range Financial Plan, all by the end of next year. Sound Transit staff will be tasked with identifying a “new process to proactively and iteratively manage affordability, service delivery, and related issues.” A significant portion of that work will fall to Terri Mestas, who joined Sound Transit as the agency’s deputy CEO for megaproject delivery last year and has been leading the work to find ways to reduce costs on the hotly anticipated ST3 projects.

What was clear Thursday was that fundamental assumptions related to the buildout of the ST3 network are set to be put on the table, including the plan’s most expensive project — a new tunnel between SoDo and Interbay through Downtown Seattle as a part of Ballard Link. Due to the regional benefit that tunnel would provide for the ability to maintain consistent frequencies, it’s set to be funded jointly by the entire region. But King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci suggested giving it another look.

“I think we need to ask all the big questions, and not shy away from them,” Balducci said. “Do we need the second downtown tunnel? I think we need to ask ourselves that question. It is a major part of the contribution of every subarea in this program. The current plan has been based on assumed constraints on headways and throughput and reliability through the tunnel. Those may continue to maintain, but we also know we have different technology that we have not deployed that could increase reliability and throughput.”

Balducci acknowledged that jettisoning the second tunnel in downtown Seattle would bring tradeoffs, including less passenger capacity and resiliency through the heart of the network. But she framed it as irresponsible to not at least study the idea. Balducci has suggested similar studies of outside-the-box concepts before, such as overhauling the agency’s split-spine concept, but was rebuffed at the time by her colleagues, including now CEO Constantine.

“There’s some real benefits. We could save a lot of money. We could deliver West Seattle to Ballard and the spine faster. We could potentially defer or avoid impacts to downtown Seattle and potentially solve this entire debate we’ve been having about what to do in the Chinatown-International District,” Baldduci continued.

With board members continually reaffirming their commitment to the regional light rail “spine” and the full ST3 network, the tough decisions ahead will likely put competing values including ridership, connectivity, and geography at odds with one another. Balducci is also pushing to adopt consistent service delivery standards that will guide how the board makes decisions around prioritizing segments.

“I’ve really been encouraging people to think big to blue sky. So that means that questions that used to be thought asked and answered can be reopened, whatever they happen to be,” Constantine said. “We’re not going to be weighed down by the assumptions of the past. We’re going to figure out, based on what we know now, how to build this thing and operate this thing sustainably.”

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