West Seattle bus changes Saturday: Your questions, Metro’s answers

Just a few days till Metro launches RapidRide in West Seattle, implements changes on other routes, and ends the Ride-Free Zone downtown. Big changes for bus riders (as detailed here), and it was clear from WSB comment discussions that many had questions, so we asked Metro to participate in a Q/A, and they agreed. In case you haven’t seen it in the WSB Forums – where we invited people to post questions during a three-hour window yesterday – some of the answers are in. Metro included the original questions in the document with the responses, so we converted it all into a PDF, and you can see it here. (Once the remaining responses are in, we’ll put it into a bit more of a conventional story format.)

mela September 26, 2012 (9:37 pm)

Living down close to Alki Point, going back from work later than 6 p.m. gives us not many easy choices. It will definitely take much longer to change in Sodo or at the Junction than only to take one bus. Last 37 leaves downtown at 5.50! Going out downtown in the evening and taking the bus is also not really an option anymore. I don’t want to wait on an empty bus station in Sodo or the Junction in the middle of the night to catch the 50. And for the summer – probably parking around Alki gets even worth. Sunday afternoon 56 busses where always quiet crowded. But taking 2 busses instead of 1 will probably let a lot of people drive.

kr September 26, 2012 (10:24 pm)

So in answer to my question (#4) I heard: “we’ll see what we can do” and “you’re screwed”.

My prediction is that we’re going to be standing room only on the 116’s that do stop. Currently we basically have to flag them down and step in front of the drivers to get them to pull over in the first place. Maybe we’ll have to work with the neighbors and figure out which side of the street can take which bus at which time. Hopefully I’m wrong.

I agree that once the busses get to the new on-ramp, the speed and reliability may increase but the 116/8/9 busses have to go potentially the slowest route in the city to get there. Here’s the brilliant idea, let’s send our busses past two stadiums that have events on 5-6 nights out of the week and then have them turn and try to cross the major west coast north-south train tracks to get over to Starbucks and wait 30 minutes at a time for trains to build and clear. Then we’ll send them stoplight by stoplight down one of the most freight congested corridors in the area.

Sounds great to me.

Krystal September 26, 2012 (10:32 pm)

I’ve always been shocked at what is considered “peak hours” for KCMetro. 6pm-ish is when most express busses stop running, and when I worked downtown, very rarely did I leave the office before 6pm. After 6pm, it would take about an hour to get home. The only logical thing I have seen from KCMetro of recent is the elimination of the ride-free zone.

Moose2 September 27, 2012 (8:45 pm)

Thanks for getting Metro to answer the questions, and thanks to Metro for answering them (although I am not very happy with the service change).

I question the answer to q19 though – northbound 128 does not stop at bay 4 on any timetime I’ve got (50, 128, 55). It stops around the corner on 44th Ave SW. We’ll find out on Monday who is right.

-Moose