Bracing for more Seattle traffic as Amazon workers return from vacation

Monday, Jan. 6 will mark the first full week of Amazon requiring its employees to return to the office five days a week. That's 65,000 people in cars, buses, trains, and walking shoes streaming into Seattle, Bellevue, and Redmond.

So how are all those workers affecting everybody else's commutes?

The preceding Friday may have been one of the last mellow mornings at the Pike Place Market. At 9 a.m., some produce sellers had been there for hours already, but a second shift was starting to roll in. That timing means those workers' commutes coincide with those of Amazon employees returning to the company’s office buildings. On that last sleepy Friday, workers who commute to the market were feeling the calm before the storm.

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"It's still a vacation week," Tisbury Pringle Ennis said as she set up her art glass display. "It's kind of hard to gauge because the kids are still out of school."

"It was lighter than usual," Daegon Kai said about their morning commute from Capitol Hill. "There were seven people on the bus."

Kai said whatever happens next week, their short commute will allow them to weather it.

Others at Pike Place pointed to signs of an uptick in commuter bustle. Nels Weber said he saw more people than usual on his light rail commute. He even saw a fare ambassador for the first time. John Sebastian saw brake lights and bumper-to-bumper cars on I-5 and decided to take surface streets instead, which were wide open.

That was the week when Amazon's return-to-office mandate kicked in, on a Thursday. But the week following January 6 could bring more significant changes.

Amazon's return-to-office policy will change Seattle's commuter landscape. The only question is when its full strength will kick in, and what that will feel like now that light rail extends to Lynnwood, its trains cutting through congestion like a shovel through a tulip bulb.

“From the south up north to Seattle, it's bad already,” said Jennifer Garcia, who sells hand-painted t-shirts and hats from a stall called Galaxy Wear in Pike Place Market. "So I'm going to assume it's going to get really bad."

She said she drives because the bus and the light rail station are a long way from her house. But if traffic gets too bad, “ then I guess the bus is probably going to be the best bet.”