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(Image: SDOT)
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With just over 150 days to a possible start of service on the line, the final efforts of construction workers and local legislators are aligning to begin RapidRide G bus service on the just under 2.50-mile, 10-station Madison route — maybe as soon as August.
Tuesday, the King County Council approved Ordinance 2024-0053 to establish service on the new RapidRide G connecting Seattle’s downtown to Madison Valley, passing through First Hill, Capitol Hill, and the Central District. The ordinance also officially revises eight nearby bus routes effective at the end of summer.
Officials say construction for the G Line is nearing completion with service on the new line anticipated to begin at the Fall 2024 service change — tentatively August 31st. The arrival of that milestone will be very welcome to transit officials facing skepticism about the return on investment for the surprisingly slow and costly to implement “bus rapid transit” that has been touted as a cheaper, faster, more effective solution than costly light rail and streetcar lines.
A new bus island being installed between Terry and Boren (Image: SDOT)
The new RapidRide G line will operate along the Madison alignment with station locations, providing “very frequent service” to connect downtown, First Hill, Capitol Hill, and the Central District. The service levels approved Tuesday will feed the line with buses every six minutes on weekdays, every 15 minutes on weekday nights, every six to 15 minutes on Saturdays, every 15 minutes on Sundays, and every 15-40 minutes on weekend nights. The G Line will operate 23 hours a day, from 5:00 AM to 4:00 AM.
King County Metro currently operates seven RapidRide lines (A-F, H) and is working to develop five more lines including the new G for planned openings between 2024 and 2030. CHS reported here on the start of construction on RapidRide J serving Eastlake. The Eastlake project including two new miles of bus priority lanes and 3.7 miles of “protected bike facilities” has a $128 million cost estimate.
Originally conceived with a planned opening date of 2019, the Madison RapidRide G line started with a $134 million price tag buoyed by $60 million in federal funding. The construction budget, by the way, included an agreement with Capitol Hill queer bar Pony on a $250,000 deal with the city in exchange for shaving off a bit of its property to make room for the new route.
RapidRide G broke ground in 2021. While the project will bring major transit, biking, walking, and driving safety improvements, neighborhood businesses and residents have had a rough ride during the years of construction. RapidRide G work included millions of dollars of attached utility and infrastructure work by the city that has created months of major challenges for businesses and residents living along Madison.
CHS reported here on the final year of construction that will complete the 2.4-mile route promising six-minute service during most hours of the day between 1st Ave downtown and MLK Jr Way in Madison Valley with stops across First Hill and Capitol Hill along the way.
For comparison, the First Hill Streetcar debuted in early 2016 just under three years after its start of construction to complete the 2.5-mile route. Sound Transit footed the $132.8 million bill for that project to compensate for the decision to cut a planned light rail stop on First Hill. The First Hill Streetcar line carried around 4,000 riders a day in 2023.
Along with what is hoped to be faster, more efficient bus service, the RapidRide G route will also have new curb ramps, sidewalks, and crossing improvements. In addition to the infrastructure and water main work, the new line will include stations with passenger amenities — “including branded RapidRide shelters, off-board fare payment, and real-time arrival information” — new pavement, dedicated transit and bike lanes, transit signal priority at intersections, and reconfigured intersections with new crosswalk and bike box markings, separation between pedestrian and bicycle paths, some areas of expanded sidewalk space, and “restricted turn movements to facilitate pedestrian and bicycle safety” as Madison has been slowly transformed along the route.
Along with approving service costs for starting the new RapidRide G line this year, the ordinance passed Tuesday formally approves Metro’s planned changes to other routes in the area as it optimizes its schedules around the new line. Changes include Route 10 and Route 12 with a plan for the lines to be “reoriented” to operate along E Pine instead of E John and Madison, until they turn north on 15th Ave and 19th Ave. Metro is also going ahead with a plan to move Route 11 off Pine. Service on the former Route 47 will be replaced with a limited extension of Route 3.
The optimization will reduce service on some of the adjoining routes as Metro dedicates funds to pay for the RapidRide G hours and the City of Seattle reallocates funding supplemental service. That Seattle “rebalancing” will mean Routes 10, 11, and 12 will have fewer Seattle-funded hours while Routes 49 and 60 will have more Seattle-funded hours, the county says.
“Although overall transit service levels in the project area will increase due to the very frequent service on the new G Line, combined service levels on the other bus routes in the area will, in future years, provide less service than in the past, due to a combination of lower investment levels from the Seattle transit funding measure and fewer County-funded service hours allocated to those routes,” a King County Council briefing on the ordinance reads.
Minor at Madison (Image: SDOT)
According to the county, starting up RapidRide G this year will require 15,835 service hours and that the entire restructure will require a total of 15,950 service hours in 2024, at a total cost of $3.93 million. That money has already been budgeted and is available. For its first full year, RapidRide G will eat up nearly 48,000 service hours, “an expense that would need to be included in those future budgets,” according to the county.
King County is on the hook for that level of RapidRide G service for five years under King County Metro’s agreement with the Federal Transit Administration. Officials are crossing their fingers that ridership on the new line will justify the expense.
We’ll get the first idea of demand soon. Metro officials said this spring’s approval of the service changes will give it time to “complete the scheduling and staffing changes needed to implement the new service beginning at the Fall 2024 service change.” City of Seattle transportation officials boasted of forecasts predicting 12,000 RapidRide G riders a day during the design phases of the project five years but have stopped including ridership forecasts in communications around the project.
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Subscribe to CHS to help us pay writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for as little as $5 a month.