The extra priority will keep riders moving, but Seattle isn’t committing to keeping it in place long-term.
The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) has announced plans to add additional bus priority along Aurora Avenue N next spring, a direct response to I-5 construction plans expected to create a spillover effect on parallel north-south routes. The existing bus lanes along Aurora Avenue, which carries the RapidRide E line, only provide dedicated space during peak hours, despite the fact that the E Line is the state’s busiest bus line, carrying over 13,000 riders every weekday. New signage between N 38th Street and N 115th Street will expand the bus lanes to 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The prompt for this long overdue change is Revive I-5, a multi-year road preservation project targeting Interstate 5 between Downtown Seattle and Northgate that is set to reduce the highway by two lanes along different segments for nine months at a time in 2025, 2026, and 2027. Three weekend closures in 2025 and 2027 and four in 2026 will force all traffic onto local streets or the express lanes.
While in the works for years, the most impactful Revive I-5 work was delayed by the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) in order to have Sound Transit’s Lynnwood Link operating along the corridor to offer an alternative to I-5 traffic.
But the City of Seattle is not committing to leaving the 24/7 bus lanes in place along the corridor after Revive I-5 work concludes, despite the clear need to speed up the E Line and the expense that comes with adding signage along the long corridor. Metro has rated the E Line as its least-reliable RapidRide line.
“At this time, the bus lanes on Aurora Avenue are planned to be in place for the duration of the I-5 Revive project,” SDOT spokesperson Ethan Bergerson told The Urbanist. “We do not have information on whether they will be made permanent after the project concludes.”
As of this fall, more than one out of every four RapidRide E trips have been running late — defined as at least five minutes behind schedule, below Metro’s average systemwide and short of its target of exceeding 80% on-time performance — or headway adherence in transit lingo. Even as Metro has been explicit about the need to move toward more all-day service that prioritizes trips other than peak commute trips, many bus priority lanes in key chokepoints become loading and paid parking zones outside of rush hour.
Southbound priority will be continuous for the E Line between N 115th Street and N 38th Street, but northbound buses will have a gap between N 50th Street and N 60th Street, the spot where all northbound coaches exit Aurora to serve Linden Avenue N, re-entering the highway at Winona Avenue N.
Behind this rapid deployment of transit priority, SDOT continues work on a long-term overhaul of the entirety of Aurora Avenue N, aided by a $30 million allocation included in the newly approved Seattle Transportation Levy. A $50 million counterpart was promised by the state legislature in 2022, but those funds remain locked away in future years and a pressing budget crisis could ensure that they aren’t able to be moved forward anytime soon.
No additional transit corridor upgrades are set to be put in place to sustain riders through the I-5 construction period, though new bus lanes added to 15th Avenue NW in Ballard and Interbay should bring benefits. By the end of 2025 (or early 2026), the Sound Transit 2 Line’s extension across Lake Washington and up to Lynnwood should double train frequencies and provide much more capacity for riders, and construction will be paused during the months surrounding the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
While the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) is developing an outreach strategy around Revive I-5 that will involve coordination with multiple area transit agencies, the department is stopping short of recommending increased telework. Since WSDOT has wholeheartedly embraced the work-from-home trend for its employees, the strategy to not emphasize teleworking to mitigate traffic seems to be coming from the City of Seattle.
“We are committed to the Mayor’s downtown activation plan – we are NOT telling people to work from home,” a WSDOT presentation provided to the Washington legislature early this month stated.
Mayor Bruce Harrell has required most City of Seattle employees to work on-site at least three days per week starting in November. Harrell has framed the policy as part of his downtown activation plan — a hodgepodge of interventions in various stages of implementation or planning that are aimed at boosting foot traffic and commercial activity downtown, in hopes of reversing pandemic losses and a general sense of disorder. While congestion has coming surging back on local highways, particularly mid-week when office headcounts are higher, downtown vibrancy has been slower to recover.
Without expanded bus priority on Aurora, riders using the transit system outside peak hours, especially on weekends, would suffer the ramifications of that choice and the full effect of a perfect storm for congestion, though the entire city’s transportation network is likely to feel the effects of the Revive I-5 closures. Whether the City of Seattle is ready to deploy additional emergency bus lanes — as they did in 2021 after a planned closure of the Montlake Bridge caused gridlock near the University of Washington — will be something to watch.
Ryan Packer lives in the Summit Slope neighborhood of Capitol Hill and has been writing for the The Urbanist since 2015. They report on multimodal transportation issues, #VisionZero, preservation, and local politics. They believe in using Seattle's history to help attain the vibrant, diverse city that we all wish to inhabit. Ryan's writing has appeared in Capitol Hill Seattle Blog, Bike Portland, and Seattle Bike Blog, where they also did a four-month stint as temporary editor.