What’s changing in Metro’s next ‘service revision’ June 12

| Transportation | West Seattle news

Metro‘s out with a reminder this morning that the next of its three-times-yearly “service revisions” is coming up June 12. Nothing major for West Seattle, but the announcement includes a reminder of the three routes that will be affected by the South Park Bridge‘s permanent closure on June 30th, as well as a reminder about the routes that are currently affected by the Spokane Street Viaduct Widening Project, two weeks after shutdown of the westbound 1st Avenue South ramp to the West Seattle Bridge. Read on for the highlights:

Starting Saturday, June 12, King County Metro Transit will revise some bus routing and schedules to update service.

Some of the most significant changes will not begin until Wednesday, June 30 when routes 60, 131 and 134 are revised due to the closure of the South Park Bridge on 14th/16th Avenue South.

Most of the changes that begin on June 12 are minor adjustments. Metro customers can view all the details in the special Rider Alert brochure now online at: www.kingcounty.gov/metro.

Highlights of Metro’s changes in June include:

* Route 25 – The city of Seattle is closing the Northeast 45th Street Viaduct between the U-District and University Village for three months starting June 14. During this three- month closure, Metro’s Route 25 will be rerouted through the University of Washington campus. Some stops on Northeast 45th Street and 15th Avenue Northeast will be missed. See the Rider Alert on Metro Online for more details.
* Route 60, 131 & 134 – When the South Park Bridge closes June 30, these routes will operate in South Park via South Cloverdale Street, 14th Avenue South, State Route 99 and the First Avenue South Bridge. This will also change routing into Georgetown, but not through that neighborhood. These changes may cause delays south of South Park.
* Routes 81, 83 & 85 – These Night Owl routes will operate some southbound trips via the SODO Busway to provide a more convenient transfer to Link light rail service at Stadium Station.
* Route 217 – All PM trips will now operate in the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel instead of surface streets.
* Long-term rerouting continues for routes 21 Local, 22, 35, 56 Local, 57, 85, 116, 118, and 119 serving West Seattle, White Center and Vashon due to ongoing construction on the Spokane Street Viaduct.
* The following routes will be renumbered as of June 12, but the routing and schedule remains the same for each:

– Route 291 becomes Route 930 (Redmond-Kingsgate P&R)
– Route 915 becomes Route 186 (Enumclaw-Auburn)
– Route 921 becomes Route 246 (Factoria-Somerset-Bellevue)
– Route 929 becomes Route 224 (Fall City-Redmond)
– Route 941 becomes Route 193 (Star Lake P&R-First Hill)

Metro adjusts its routes and scheduling three times a year in February, June and September to improve service and keep up with the changing needs of transit passengers. All of the changes are detailed in new green Metro timetables and a special Rider Alert brochure. Look for them on buses in the racks near the front of the coach.

New schedule information is available in Metro’s online Trip Planner at www.kingcounty.gov/tripplanner . Be sure to enter a travel date of June 12 or later to access the new information. The revised route schedules will be available on Metro Online on Friday, June 11 at www.kingcounty.gov/metro. Or, call Metro Rider Information at
(206) 553-3000.

Noelle June 1, 2010 (10:46 am)

Metro’s (206) 553-3000 info line has not been working for days! The info line is handy to call when I am out & about and want to know when my next bus is coming. You call in and can enter a bus stop number and get the next times your bus will be at your stop. The “Bus time stop look-up feature” has only been giving the bus number and current time of day since last week! The extension to talk to a “Metro Specialist” (a real person) is always busy. This would not be such a big issue if I could grab a schedule, but there are none on any of the West Seattle buses because the new schedules are due out soon. Its a BIG issue for bus riders!

WSB June 1, 2010 (10:59 am)

Noelle – often gov’t agencies see comments here without us ever having to call their attention to them but in this case since it’s Tuesday post-holiday catchup day, I am going to point this out to Metro’s communications folks to at least make sure they know about it … TR

Linda Thielke June 1, 2010 (11:16 am)

Tracy & WSB readers:

We been having some tech issues with the recorded bus time info, so we disabled it rather than give out bad info. We starting debugging it about two weeks ago, and our IT people thought it would probably take a total of three weeks to fix. I’ll check and see if we have an update for when it will be active again.

–Linda T, Metro

Sue June 1, 2010 (12:26 pm)

Linda T., the trip planner online was also having major problems yesterday – I tried to get times on a trip from Fauntleroy/Alaska to 2nd/Seneca, and it told me the fastest way to get there was via the water taxi bus, the water taxi, and the #66 downtown (which is far from “fastest” – and also came up when I asked for “fewest transfers”). When I tried to get return trips later, it told me to take the 120 to the 128 in West Seattle. No matter what I changed in the equations, the 54 and 55 simply did not exist in the trip planner yesterday.