Crammed Seattle buses to get some relief this month
Transit officials in King County have heard your rush hour complaints: Buses are often late or they’re jam-packed.
Riders will get some relief later this month, when Metro puts more buses on the road. It's an overhaul that will affect about a third of Metro's system, 80 routes in total.
The agency is adding extra buses on the 35 busiest routes. That includes buses that serve South Lake Union, I-90 Express, and the Rapid Ride C and E lines.
Metro will also adjust more than 60 bus schedules so that they're more accurate. King County Metro planning supervisor Katie Chalmers said that means basing them off of Seattle's traffic trends.
Chalmers: "We look at the schedules and where a trip used to take 30 minutes, today it's taking 35 minutes. So we can actually adjust the schedules so that means when people look at a timetable or plan a trip using Metro online they're going to get a more real picture of how long that trip is actually going to take."
The changes will take effect March 11 and are all posted online.
It's the first of four bus system overhauls that will happen in 2017 and 2018. King County has set aside $3 million this biennium for transit upgrades. Chalmers said that funding came from a growth in sales tax revenue.
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Paige Browning
Newscaster
Paige hosts midday newscasts and monitors news of significance to the Puget Sound region. She hopped over Washington’s mountains to join KUOW, after hosting news and reporting at Spokane Public Radio since 2011. She began her start in radio while a journalism student at University of Montana, by sharing stories with KUFM. Paige was raised in the mountains and rivers around Spokane. In her spare time she cheers on the Mariners in the summer, and hopes for snow in the winter.
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