(SDOT MAP with travel times/ Is the ‘low bridge’ closed? LOOK HERE/ West Seattle-relevant traffic cams HERE)
6:52 AM: Welcome to fall, which arrived six hours ago. Some notes:
METRO’S SERVICE CHANGE: First weekday since this took effect on Saturday. Here’s our roundup of West Seattle changes.
NEW ISLAND AT FAUNTLEROY/ALASKA: As shown here last night.
SOUTH SEATTLE COLLEGE: Fall quarter classes start today at SSC (WSB sponsor), so be ready for more traffic on 16th SW.
New bus lane striping on NB-99 from the bridge to Dearborn is causing a back up on the bridge and the buses are now waiting to merge, on the on ramp, and for cars to merge onto 99. Slower for everyone. What’s the right place to direct complaints about this to try to get traffic moving again?
I’m generally good with bus only lanes but I just don’t understand what this change adds relative to the more significant backups it clearly causes prior to this location. I saw about a dozen cars drive merrily down the bus lane until a SPD patrol car who happened to be in the left lane decided to pull a white pickup over on that paved curb area just after the down slope. Not a safe place for the SPD to do their work either. Anyway, SDOT will be getting at least one nastygram from me.
I can’t believe they turned the Right Lane of 99 north back into a bus lane right after you get on from the West Seattle bridge!!!!! I was so frustrated to see that this morning. Having that as an open lane and not requiring cars to merge was really helping traffic flow. Is this a permanent change? I don’t think it was a good one at all!
I meant to mention that above as well; it was also installed over the weekend. We mentioned multiple times that it was going to happen.
Do you know where WS residents can email/mail a complaint? As mentioned a number of times, this is now slowing down all users. My bus travel time just increased by 5 minutes with this one change and I am sure it will get worse.
Start with SDOT at 206-684-ROAD or 684-Road@seattle.gov
My unsolicited advice: Be specific if you can, it took x minutes with but x minutes without, I was x minutes late to work, or whatever quantification you can add.
I would be shocked if WSDOT/SDOT didn’t have hard data that shows (or will show) that this makes traffic slower for all. On Twitter WSDOT is saying it’s to keep busses moving in light of future Alaska Way construction, but:1) The bus lane seems to end before the ramp that leads up to the exits.2) We’ve already has no bus lane and extensive Alaskan Way construction/closures all year and it’s been fine.My fear is the optics of removing a bus lane will keep them from acting on the data even if it shows this is a bad idea.
We do actually need a bus lane leaving downtown to get onto 99…this bus lane entering downtown doesn’t really help traffic flow. I would hope our leaders use data to make their decisions, or at least have some traffic engineers do some modeling. Instead it seems like they make decisions from afar and then wait for people to complain.
It would be interesting to know how much of the time saved by having the bus lane is canceled out by the buses being stuck in the backup trying to reach the bus lane.
Post 9 am traffic much better this morning than normal on 99 with 2 lanes on Alaska open keeping the backup down but stuck now on 1st northbound on the C because way too many people are still driving on 1st. Why take 1st when there are so many other streets that are much faster? That goes for the buses too. I’ll be so glad when Columbia is finally open.
My NB 21X bus still took the busway reroute this morning. I thought this was supposed to end with Dearborn reopening and due to the service refresh as of yesterday?
Sorry, comment time is over.
| 14 COMMENTS