Seattle Looks to Rescue Sound Transit's 4th Avenue Transit Street Plan
When construction finally starts for Sound Transit 3 (ST3) light rail projects within the City of Seattle, fewer neighborhoods will be impacted as significantly as SoDo. At the nexus between the West Seattle Link and the Ballard Link Extension projects, SoDo will see some of the longest construction timelines of any ST3 projects. The agency hopes to start construction on both projects in 2027 and open the West Seattle line by 2032 and a partial segment of the Ballard line by 2037 — with the full line to Ballard tabbed for 2039. On top of the direct impacts from construction, which will last nearly a decade, another major change is headed SoDo’s way: the permanent closure of the SoDo busway.
A quiet workhorse of Seattle’s transit system, the SoDo busway, which opened in 1991, whisks riders along a dedicated lane in each direction from Spokane Street in the south to Royal Brougham near the stadiums, keeping buses moving parallel to the existing 1 Line tracks and allowing easy transfers. That busway today carries over 800 bus trips every weekday, but is set to be replaced with a second set of tracks to carry Link riders between West Seattle and Downtown — no matter what alternative the Sound Transit board chooses for a light rail alignment.
Those bus trips will need to go somewhere, so Sound Transit and the City of Seattle have been coordinating on proposed changes to nearby 4th Avenue S as the obvious choice for a new priority bus corridor in SoDo.
Where today 4th Avenue S tops out at 12 buses per hour during a busy evening hour, that will increase to nearly 60 buses per hour with the closure of the busway. As part of its environmental review for West Seattle and Ballard Link, Sound Transit will have to quantify the impacts that come from shifting those buses and find ways to mitigate those impacts. That mitigation will center Level of Service (LoS) for cars and trucks, the amount of time drivers will wait in added traffic.
https://www.theurbanist.org/2024/07/26/seattle-looks-to-rescue-sound-transits-4th-avenue-transit-street/