Montlake Lid Bus Stops Opening April 12th
Bus stop on Montlake Blvd NE opening April 12th.King County Metro announced today that the bus stops on the Montlake lid over SR 520, which are the last element of the Montlake interchange and lid to be completed, will open on Saturday, April 12th.
Prior to 2019, when it was permanently closed for construction of the lid, there had always been a freeway stop on SR 520 at Montlake Blvd. Every bus that took SR 520 through Montlake without exiting stopped at a pair of stops on SR 520 at the outer edges of the freeway. Of the routes that exited SR 520 to serve UW, they served the area in the eastbound direction only with a bus stop on Montlake upstairs. Speaking of stairs, the old stop in the eastbound direction was not ADA accessible, requiring passengers to be able to use stairs.
The new stops are quite different from the original Montlake flyer stops. For one, these stops are not on the outer edge of the freeway anymore. Rather, they are on the HOV3+ restricted on and off-ramps of SR 520.
Relevant portion of the map of new bus stops in the Metro Matters blog post. The full map can be found here.
Consequently, buses that cross Montlake on 520 will not stop here, as only buses that enter or exit the freeway at Montlake are able to access these stops. Routes accessing SR 520 that will use these stops are 255, 271, ST 542, and ST 556. Routes that stay on Montlake Blvd that use these stops (which includes the southbound stop at Roanoke St) are 43 and 48. While routes that cross Montlake without exiting don't serve these stops, there are a lot fewer of these routes remaining, as most were either suspended during the pandemic, or deleted with the opening of Northgate Link. In the case of route 255, the service was moved from downtown Seattle to UW after the closure of the Montlake flyer stop, so it once again has access to Montlake at SR 520. This leaves ST route 545 as the only major service on 520 that skips Montlake. As I understand it, the original intention was for the stop to be able to be served by buses crossing Montlake as well. This would have presumably been done by adding special signal phases allowing buses to move between the HOV ramps on the east side of montlake and the ramps on the west, but (probably in large part due to the lack of bus service crossing under Montlake Blvd) this was not implemented and there are no plans to do so.
Coincidentally, just hours before the official announcement, I was on the Montlake lid checking out progress and getting some photos of the yet-to-be-opened bus stops. Here is the state of these stops, the week before they are set to be served by transit:
