Sound Transit, partner agencies should retain express bus routes after Link extensions open

The Puget Sound region is on the verge of a high capac­i­ty tran­sit revolution.

With­in a few years, dozens of new sta­tions will join Sound Tran­sit’s Link light rail sys­tem, as the agency opens new exten­sions to the north and east.

Three new sta­tions are slat­ed to open in 2021 (U Dis­trict, Roo­sevelt, North­gate) fol­lowed by ten sta­tions east of the cur­rent north/south trunk line (Jud­kins Park, Mer­cer Island, South Belle­vue, East Main Belle­vue, Belle­vue Down­town, Wilbur­ton, Spring District/120th, Bel-Red/130th, Over­lake Vil­lage, and Red­mond Tech­nol­o­gy Cen­ter) in 2023. Two more Red­mond sta­tions will open in 2024.

Also open­ing in 2024 are four Lyn­nwood Link sta­tions: Shore­line South/145th, Shore­line North/185th, Mount­lake Ter­race, and Lyn­nwood City Center.

In total, Sound Tran­sit has nine­teen new sta­tions set to open by the end of 2024, with thir­ty miles of new track con­nect­ing them. Addi­tion­al sta­tions are slat­ed to open in the ensu­ing years, extend­ing light rail’s reach into even more communities.

With the days of a longer, more capa­ble light rail spine draw­ing near­er, plan­ners at Sound Tran­sit, Com­mu­ni­ty Tran­sit, King Coun­ty Metro, Pierce Tran­sit, and Everett Tran­sit are talk­ing more and more about how the tran­sit land­scape is going to change when the new exten­sions come online.

“Sound Tran­sit and King Coun­ty Metro are con­sid­er­ing end­ing cross-lake Inter­state 90 bus routes fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of the East Link light rail cor­ri­dor in 2023,” Sound Pub­lish­ing’s Aaron Kun­kler report­ed ear­li­er this week.

“Most East­side bus­es that cur­rent­ly go down­town will involve a trans­fer to Link,” the arti­cle quotes Sound Tran­sit’s Rachelle Cun­ning­ham as saying.

Today, Sound Tran­sit Peter Rogoff remarked that Com­mu­ni­ty Tran­sit will stop run­ning bus­es into down­town Seat­tle when Lyn­nwood Link opens.

Sound Tran­sit staff should not be mak­ing these kinds of state­ments, espe­cial­ly since they’re oblig­at­ed to con­sid­er pub­lic input pri­or to redraw­ing ser­vice maps. These kinds of dec­la­ra­tions are putting the cart before the horse.

Scrap­ping express routes like Com­mu­ni­ty Tran­sit’s 402 would be a mis­take. Ter­mi­nat­ing express routes like ST’s 554 at Link sta­tions would also be a mistake.

Rail and bus are dif­fer­ent modes that com­ple­ment each oth­er. For our tran­sit net­work to com­pete effec­tive­ly for trips, the net­work needs to offer rid­ers choic­es, and get them where they want to go as quick­ly as possible.

Light rail will offer unpar­al­leled reli­a­bil­i­ty and fre­quen­cy of ser­vice when it opens, and it will be the mode of choice for a great many commuters.

How­ev­er, it’s rea­son­able to assume that there will still be demand for fast rides between major hubs with­out stops in between. Sound Tran­sit and its part­ners should ascer­tain this lev­el of demand and meet it by con­tin­u­ing to offer express bus ser­vice in the cor­ri­dors soon to be served by East Link and Lyn­nwood Link.

We have spent enor­mous sums over the years invest­ing in high occu­pan­cy vehi­cle (HOV) sys­tem for our high­ways, and we should con­tin­ue to lever­age those decades of invest­ment even after light rail joins the tran­sit mix (at long last).

It’s real­ly impor­tant to offer rid­ers choic­es. Espe­cial­ly rid­ers who own cars.

Con­sid­er the Seat­tle to Taco­ma cor­ri­dor. Present­ly, there’s a choice of modes on week­days (and even some week­end days). You can take Sounder to bypass the mess on I‑5 if you want. Or, if I‑5 isn’t jammed, you can take the ⁵⁹⁰⁄₅₉₄ Express, which is one of Sound Tran­sit’s best routes. When the I‑5 HOV lane is not con­gest­ed, it pro­vides remark­ably fast ser­vice that’s com­pa­ra­ble to driving.

Or con­sid­er the Seat­tle to Red­mond corridor.

When I want to go into down­town Seat­tle from NPI’s home­town, I have options that I nev­er had a few years ago, thanks to Sound Transit.

I can take the 545 Express from down­town Red­mond to reach any num­ber of places in the cen­ter city. Alter­na­tive­ly, if I‑5 looks bad, I can take the 542 Express to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton Sta­tion, tap my ORCA card to trans­fer modes, and then con­tin­ue my jour­ney on Link under­ground. Some­times the 542 + Link is clear­ly the supe­ri­or option. And oth­er times, the 545 is the supe­ri­or option.

Know­ing that I have options is a great feel­ing. I’m more like­ly to opt against dri­ving for a trip into Seat­tle know­ing that those options are there for me.

Redun­dan­cy is also an impor­tant rea­son not to scrap express bus routes.

No mode oper­ates flaw­less­ly one hun­dred per­cent of the time. If Link expe­ri­ences an inter­rup­tion of some kind (like this), it is eas­i­er to accom­mo­date impact­ed rid­ers if they can sim­ply shift to express bus routes that par­al­lel the light rail spine as opposed to mak­ing them wait for a fleet of spe­cial shut­tles to be deployed.

Instead of assum­ing that Link’s arrival will obvi­ate the need for express routes in cer­tain cor­ri­dors, Sound Tran­sit and its part­ners need to ascer­tain from rid­ers (and poten­tial new rid­ers) what routes to offer. What mix of ser­vice will max­i­mize the appeal and effec­tive­ness of mass tran­sit? That’s the ques­tion plan­ners need to ask. When plan­ning starts with bad assump­tions, it can lead to bad results.

Link’s expan­sion will afford us an oppor­tu­ni­ty to build a bet­ter tran­sit map. The thought­ful real­lo­ca­tion of bus ser­vice based on pub­lic input should be on the table; the pre­sup­posed elim­i­na­tion of express routes should not.