Route 8 is probably the most notorious bus in Seattle, with its power tardiness being described as “legendary” by The Seattle Occasions editorial board and incomes it the nickname of “The L8.” Pissed off riders even raced it on the road in July, exhibiting that touring by the Route 8 bus is slower than walking — or even a conga line. The trigger for that is clear: It’s consistently mired within the site visitors that turns Denny Method right into a car parking zone as automobiles queue for Interstate 5. If Seattle desires to satisfy its local weather targets and hold the town transferring, bus lanes needs to be put in alongside Denny Technique to convey Route 8 on top of things.
Route 8 is one in all Seattle’s most significant bus routes as the one direct transit connection between Seattle Middle, Capitol Hill and the Central District. Though it’s Metro’s slowest and least dependable route, it is likely one of the hottest routes that King County Metro operates, attracting over 7,000 every day riders.
Regardless of this, the Seattle Division of Transportation continues to be wholly unconcerned about Route 8’s struggles as a recent announcement on the SDOT weblog solely supplied “alternate routing and wayfinding” and “encourag[ing] transit use” to mitigate site visitors impacts on Denny. The $12 million Denny Way Intelligent Transportation Systems Project, accomplished in 2023, didn’t even make a dent in fixing congestion, so it’s unclear how a few signs are going to have any impression in any respect. Moreover, plans to advertise transit whereas permitting the one bus on Denny to stay slower than strolling are utterly contradictory.
The one strategy to increase transit ridership and really get folks transferring can be a bus lane on Denny. A complete lane of solo drivers on Denny Method between Seattle Middle and I-5 can match onto one articulated Route 8 bus, and a transit lane would permit that bus to be over 4 instances sooner than driving alongside this part. This might be sure you appeal to numerous drivers to take the bus as a substitute and simply make up for the eliminated site visitors lane, even when the present stage of highway-bound site visitors stays the identical. Freeway throughput wouldn’t be diminished both, because the bottleneck to I-5 is the flip to the onramp, and a single lane of Denny continues to be greater than sufficient to fill its capability.
This isn’t simply theoretical; we’ve seen the identical factor play out close by. Madison Road can also be very important to each native and I-5 site visitors and was as soon as a chronically congested two-lane arterial with a languishing bus, similar to Denny. Nonetheless, SDOT took the daring step of including devoted bus lanes on it for RapidRide G. This lastly gave present transit riders a quick and dependable commute whereas additionally attracting huge swaths of recent riders. Drivers had been drawn in by the prospect of having the ability to breeze previous site visitors and keep away from the headache of parking, inflicting bus ridership on Madison to almost quadruple as we’ve changed 4,500 automobiles on our roads with a fleet of 13 buses.
We urgently want the identical therapy on Denny Method. Happily, not like Madison, development impacts can be almost nonexistent because the Denny Way Paving Project has already achieved the street upkeep that usually comes together with bus lanes. Which means that a brand new bus lane would solely require crimson paint and signage that may very well be put in in a single day. This additionally minimizes prices, that are already funded by transit enhancements included within the voter-approved Seattle Transportation Levy.
The inhabitants inside Seattle metropolis limits grew by 18,900 folks final 12 months. We should begin taking daring and decisive motion to increase viable options to driving. In any other case, we threat being lulled right into a site visitors and local weather disaster that can proceed to incentivize driving as our inhabitants explodes. If you happen to agree, please take into account signing the petition so as to add bus lanes on Denny at FixTheL8.com.
