Image by Francesca Oaksford

Fix Route 8!

Route 8 serves thousands of riders per day, with the highest ridership per service hour out of all routes King County Metro operates. Demand for the workhouse route is rising, but reliability has not kept up, and it is also the most delayed all-day bus route in the entire system. Buses are chronically mired in traffic on Denny Way, and the odds of an eastbound bus arriving within 5 minutes of its schedule drops embarrassingly close to 30% during the evening rush hour. To make things worse, once your bus finally does arrive, the same traffic means it takes over 17 minutes on average to travel a mile, which is essentially walking speed.

It’s unacceptable for such a vital connection in the city to be allowed to languish like this and bus lanes must be added on Denny to fix it. There is money available for this already as the 2024 Seattle Transportation Levy specifically names transit improvements on Denny and Olive Ways. However, the Seattle Department of Transportation’s 2025 Levy Delivery Plan completely ignores this voter-approved and sorely needed project. SDOT has previously designed and installed a bus lane in as little as 5 days for the U District Campus Parkway and Route 8 deserves similar urgency to fix it.

Construction will make the situation even worse as the Denny Way Paving Project replaces 12 blocks of asphalt. During construction, which started March 26th and will last through the fall, Denny will be reduced to one lane in each direction between 7 PM and 6 AM as work is completed in sections between 5th Ave and Stewart Ave. This would grind Route 8 to a halt and SDOT needs to add meaningful accommodations to ensure it can maintain some semblance of service during closures. Their current plan is to instruct flaggers to prioritize buses when they see them, but anyone who has ever ridden Route 8 knows that this is wholly inadequate. SDOT must take bolder actions, such as adding temporary bus lanes leading up to closures or closing the right turn onto the Yale I-5 on-ramp during work hours.

Tell our city and county leaders that we need to give Route 8 the priority it deserves to achieve our climate goals and improve the city!

If you want to get more involved, make sure you check “Keep me in the loop for actions and events!” to the right! We will also be posting regular updates to FixTheL8.com!