RapidRide Corridor 1993 (Route 40)

Metro Route 40 crossing the Fremont Bridge. Photo from the STB Flickr pool.

This week is all RapidRide as we review the Candidate Corridors analyzed in Metro's recently published RapidRide Prioritization Plan.

King County Metro Corridor 1993, a potential RapidRide conversion of Route 40 - traveling between Northgate, Ballard, Fremont, SLU, and Downtown Seattle - was recently set as a Tier 2 priority corridor for future RapidRide expansion.

The proposed RapidRide conversion adds BAT (business access & transit) lanes, provides time savings, and extends it to First Hill. Originally proposed as a RapidRide Fremont in the 2015 Levy to Move Seattle, the line was delayed after a lack of funding. Metro's RapidRide Prioritization Plan investigated minor alignment changes, and possible transit speed and reliability improvements for the route.

Re-Routing Route 40

First, Metro reviewed potential refinements to Route 40's alignment. The main alignment options investigated were around the northern and southern terminus, with some minor changes in Ballard.

For the northern terminus around Northgate the issue was whether to: (A) continue the existing Meridian Avenue detour to North Seattle College, or (B) route down Northgate Way. Both alignments would experience similar travel delays, but the latter has slightly higher potential ridership, so Metro chose the Northgate route as the representative alignment. Other ideas were rejected, including truncating the 40 on Holman Road NW, or extending RapidRide D to Northgate.

For the southern terminus, the Route 40 bus currently terminates in Pioneer Square. There's a unique opportunity to extend it to First Hill as the bus already travels partially there as out-of-service portions" (shown in yellow above). As an additional note if the RapidRide Route 36+49 alignment 1 is chosen, this would create a new transfer point at Broadway and Boren slightly alleviating the loss of a downtown connection for that line.

For Ballard, one small reroute is to run on 15th Ave NW instead of Leary Way for closer connections to future Link Ballard station.

Bottlenecks and Improvements

For Route 40 transit improvements currently underway, the Route 40 Transit-Plus Multimodal Corridor project will implement some BAT lanes in Fremont and FAB (Freight and Bus lanes) along Westlake Avenue, as shown above with the dashed light pink line on the map below. The Ballard Bridge repaving will add a new short southbound BAT lane just north of the bridge.

Despite SDOT focusing the FAB lanes on Westlake, Metro's map of delays experienced by Route 40 during typical traffic (below) show multi-minute delays throughout its run. The existing major delays are on N 105th St west of Northgate, on Leary Way in Ballard, the Fremont Bridge, and finally 3rd Avenue in downtown Seattle.

To address these delays, Metros' proposed RapidRide improvements include additional bus priority in the form of Bus or BAT" lanes along much of the route. This, combined with with the currently planned improvements, would create a continuous transit-priority lane almost along the entire corridor except 24th Ave NW.

Highlighting the main improvements:

• Around Northgate: Narrow lanes along NE 103rd for a center bus lane, and convert a general-purpose curb lane for a BAT lane on 5th Avenue.
• From Northgate to Crownhill: On N 105th St/Holman Rd N add bus lanes in each direction. On NW 85th St & 15th Ave NW convert shared through/left lane to left-turn only lane.
• From Crown Hill to Ballard: On NW 85th St., convert street parking to BAT lane. Queue Jumps at 24th NW NW 80th St and NW 65 St by removing parking.
• Around Fremont: Add north/west bound bus lanes on Fremont Ave, Leary Way and Market Street, complementing the currently planned south/east bound bus lanes.
• From Fremont to Downtown: Fill in bus/BAT lane gaps along Westlake Ave N from Nickerson (Fremont Bridge) to Mercer Street and down to 9th Avenue.

Seattle's SDOT has generally been supportive of implementing BAT lanes throughout the city, though some business pushback is expected. Further extensions of the bus lanes on Westlake will partially depend on how well the FAB pilot is received.

Time Savings and Stop Spacing

With the above changes, Metro estimates the route would be around 20% faster. However, that's compared to projected future delays expected on an otherwise unchanged route in 2035, so it would only be around 13% faster than the current bus route.

RapidRide Route 40 proposed stops

Currently Route 40 has 50 stops, and 68% of them are less than a quarter mile apart. The RapidRide would instead have 32 stops, increasing the average spacing from 1,300 feet to 2,030 feet (0.38 miles). Notably, the section from SLU to Ballard has much farther stop spacing, with the RapidRide version keeping only 1 for every existing 3 bus stops in that segment, while the rest of the sections generally keep 1 out of 2 bus stops.

Costs and Gains

Metro estimates that the total cost for the improvements would be approximately $96million dollars, with 54% for transit speed and reliability, 37% for new bus stations, and finally 9% for charging infrastructure extending to First Hill. Given the transit improvements, there would be estimated a net increase of 2,200 riders per weekday".

As a Tier 2 priority route, this line would be prioritized for construction as part of Metro's Interim Network" - to be implemented prior to the opening of the Ballard Link Extension in 2039 - if or when additional funding is allocated to RapidRide expansion.