This week Seattle will finally welcome light rail with the opening of Sound Transit’s Link Light Rail between downtown and Tukwila.
But even though that line will go on to the airport by year’s end, reach the UW Medical Center via Capitol Hill by 2016, and extend beyond to Northgate a few years later, the vast majority of Seattle will still be served by bus transit for the foreseeable future.
This mean we need to make smart investments to improve bus service.
Although King County operates Metro bus service, the city of Seattle can take steps now to ensure our future mobility needs are met through frequent and reliable bus service that is conveniently located and connects neighborhoods and common destinations. These steps include:
Bus priority or bus-only lanes: Seattle Department of Transportation has worked with Metro Transit to create priority bus lanes on the West Seattle Bridge, Aurora Ave. N. and 15th Ave. W. We should do the same along other key corridors so that buses have sole use of a lane at least during main commute times. This will enable buses to move reliably and quickly through rush-hour traffic.
Transit signal priority: Technology gives us the ability to enable buses to pass through intersections more quickly by keeping lights green a bit longer or turning them green sooner. We can also provide lanes and lights that allow buses to proceed through busy intersections first, something we already do in several key transit bottlenecks in the city. We should look for more locations where these features can help speed buses along their routes.
Creating new street and curb alignments: Platform payment systems that enable people to pay before they get on the bus dramatically shorten the time it takes for people to board buses and it lets drivers focus on driving rather than worrying about payments. We already use platform payments for the streetcar. Link Light Rail will operate in the same manner. With the roll out of the multi-agency ORCA regional card payment system, we should start extending platform payments to other routes in the city.
In addition, the city should encourage more transit oriented development. This means adopting land use approaches that create opportunities for people to live, work, shop, and play where they are more likely to use transit, as well as walk or ride a bicycle.
Our bus-based transit service needs to work hand-in-glove with the expanding light rail system to improve local service. The city government can play an important role in building a better bus system for Seattle and improving mobility for all us, whether we walk, bike, bus, or drive to our destination.
As much glad handing that Metro and/or the City of Seattle does for this bus system, the truth is that Metro does a lot of things OK, but Metro is NOT the freaking end all of bus systems on the planet.
Starting “express” type bus runs with limited stops all day/evening would help move things quicker.
Run more electric bus routes around the city.
I takes between a full hour to an hour and a half to bus from Phinney neighborhood to University Village. See: http://tripplanner.kingcounty.gov/cgi-bin/itin.pl
And that is a mim. of THREE bus’s you are on!
Enough with a bus stop every other block. Move the stops to every three or four blocks apart.
Quite right on all of the above about bus service improvements.
Already Metro has a “frequent service network” of ten minute or under headway bus routes that this agency and the politicians should be promoting the heck out of, especially to the high-tech geeks like me who carry BlackBerrys that can now show exactly in real time when the buses are arriving at any stop in the City of Seattle.
I have ridden buses all over the city, and I definitely agree with at least two of the above complaints:
1)paying as you enter wastes a lot of time
2)there are too many stops that are close together
About the second complaint, maybe this is too much, but I have actually started getting off the bus a stop early if someone else does, simply because I feel like a moron making the bus pull over again 200 feet further on.
I thought it was going to be some boring old post, but it really compensated for my time. I will post a link to this page on my blog. I am sure my visitors will find that very useful.
Thank you for the insight. The post was worth just about every minute reading it (plus the upcoming re-reads). Brilliant submit.