Dear Editor,

Metro’s RapidRide bus “improvements” have been presented with pretty pictures of bus zones with pretty busses.

They don’t say that a lane of either 15th N.W. or 24th N.W. will be reserved for busses only - but that’s what “picking up people without pulling out of the traffic lane” decodes to. You can see those loading bulbs over on 15th N.E. between N.W. 50th and Campus Parkway.
This won’t help car drivers.

On the other hand, taking out half the stops on 24th N.W. won’t help riders - the time saved, unless you are at N.W. 85th or just south of there, isn’t going to be much more than the extra time to walk to be bus zone. And not everyone lives next door to the bus zone, and this is an extra 2- or 3-block walk both going and coming.

(The route planner was pleased to say that many of the stops have already been removed on 15th NW, and “there wasn’t too much protest” - Ballard, unlike Magnolia or Laurelhurst, usually doesn’t organize protests very well.)

Riders on whichever route doesn’t run downtown anymore (15 or 18), will have to transfer. Metro paints it as very easy with 10-minute inbound service on the other route. OK, what about going the other direction? Outbound, hit a traffic light wrong on a “direct connection”, and wait 20 minutes in Ballard for the next bus - that does NOT encourage bus ridership.

In this economy, King County is looking for ways to save money. I think RapidRide offers some major possibilities - delete the whole thing.

 Lynn Kohner
Seattle