The ULink Restructure Doesn’t Work If You Can Cancel It for Football

Sounder Bruce (Flickr)

September 30 was a glorious day for transit ridership in many respects. Link broke 100,000 for the first time, and our system bent but didn't break under the simultaneous pressure of a regular afternoon commute, a Mariners game, and a relatively rare weeknight Husky football game. But the darker side of this is that regular commuters in NE Seattle were thrown under the bus.

We've long supported 2-seat rides in cases in which they strengthen the network, permit greater overall frequency, or offer unquestionable speed advantages, as is the case with Link. But forcing such transfers should come with an explicit guarantee that the network will function no matter the event-related disruption. Reroutes that extend transfer walks beyond a reasonable limit, or that force a 3-seat ride with an intermediate shuttle, are nearly the equivalent of not offering service at all. Choice riders will flee, and the transit-dependent suffer.

Our instincts are all wrong for gameday diversions. We shun the highest capacity and move it far away to let low-capacity vehicles maintain their free and general access. Though the event shuttles are a good and necessary service, and though they queue on Montlake Blvd itself in many cases, general transit availability is more necessary when events cause massive disruptions, not less. If we can't bring ourselves to engineer permanent bus lanes on Montlake yet, we can at least provide them when a capacity crunch demands it.

So a modest proposal: until Northgate Link opens and/or as long as UW Station remains the primary transfer hub in NE Seattle, we should guarantee that we will maintain the integrity of the service network we just overhauled, no matter the event. If we're going to force 2-seat rides, riders deserve to be able to count on them.