While trying to score the Madison Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) design by the ITDP rubric, one must assess whether Madison Street is a top ten corridor for transit. I didn’t have a good answer off the bat. Intuitively, it seemed other corridors clearly have busier buses, but they are also longer. Adjusting for length by calculating ridership per mile brings perhaps offers a fairer comparison.

For Madison Street, it might be a bit of a photo finish, but it would snag the tenth spot in my list. If a portion of Route 11 and Route 60 were included, it’d do even better. But the 11 mainly serves points east of the proposed BRT line and the 60 only uses Madison briefly as it heads north/south.

Here is how Seattle bus corridors stack up by my math:

Top Ten Corridors (by Bus Riders per Mile)

Corridor Ridership/mile Length (miles) Routes Total Weekday Ridership 1 Pike/Pine/Broadway 3800 5 10,11,49 15,100 2 Aurora Avenue 2600 13 E,5,26,28 29,500 3 Rainier Avenue 1900 9 7,9 16,300 4 15th Avenue NW/Elliot Avenue 1800 8 D 14,000 5 Taylor Avenue/Jefferson Street 1700 6.6 3,4 11,700 6 Queen Anne Avenue 1700 3.7 2,13 8,900 7 45th Street/Market Street 1700 5 44 8,300 8 Beacon Avenue 1600 6.7 36 10,700 9 Eastlake Avenue 1500 5 70 7,700 10 Madison Street 1200 3 12 3,600

Some of the corridors are tricky to calculate because it is debatable whether some bus routes count toward their total since they veer off in different directions and may only use the corridor briefly. This is particularly pronounced in a diagonal street like Madison. Note that the ridership totals are based on 2015 Metro Transit numbers (starting page 64 here), except where new 2016 restructure numbers have been released.

Compare the top ten corridors (by riders per mile) map to the Move Seattle’s map of the next seven RapidRide corridors that will bring Seatte’s total to ten with the current RapidRides E, D, and C.

In case there is any doubt to the top ten, below are the next ten corridors by riders per mile. All of the seven RapidRide+ corridors (plus the existing C) are in the top twenty. It seems not an issue that the RapidRide selections are bad, but that some routes seem to be getting overlooked. Beacon Avenue’s Route 36 scored very well in riders per mile and serves an area with a significant low income and transit dependent population. Queen Anne anchors two top ten corridors (in riders per mile anyway) with Queen Anne Avenue and Taylor Avenue. Those two routes both go through Downtown and First Hill before branching out in the Central District.

Corridor Ridership/mile Length (miles) Routes Total Weekday Ridership 11 Denny Way 1200 6.6 8 7,700 12 California Avenue SW 1200 11.5 C, 128 14,300 13 NW 85th Street/University Way 1100 6.5 45 7,200 14 E 23rd Avenue 1000 6.1 49 7,100 15 NE 125th Street/I-5 1000 10 41 10,000 16 Westlake Avenue/Leary Way 900 12.5 40 11,400 17 Lake City Way/SR-522 900 13 372, 522, 309, 312 13,100 18 Delridge Way 800 12 120 9,200 19 Dexter/Stone Way/65th Street 700 9.5 62 6,500 20 Roosevelt Way 600 7 67 4,400

Another factor to consider is how bus ridership will interplay with light rail and streetcar ridership. The Link is the ultimate transit corridor hovering around 65,000 daily riders on its 18.8-mile length for about 3,500 riders per mile. Extending the Link to Capitol Hill and to Husky Stadium was great for the city, but it did cannibalize some bus ridership and the bus restructure altered patterns further. Extending the Link to Northgate will change the ridership landscape even further. Nonetheless most transit users prefer the reliability of light rail to erratic bus routes.

If Westlake Avenue included a portion of the South Lake Union Streetcar ridership, then it’d certainly climb the list. Westlake Avenue is also hampered in securing riders per mile by how long its bus route is. The Route 40 meanders all the way to Northgate Transit Center…via 24th Ave NW. Not an arrow shot. And there’s the larger issue of how to group the bus routes together in the first place. Obviously, one could make a case for different groupings. Regardless, the top twenty routes enumerated here represent crucial corridors for Seattle transit users and ripe avenues for service upgrades.

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Doug Trumm Doug Trumm is The Urbanist's Executive Director. An Urbanist writer since 2015, he dreams of pedestrianizing streets, blanketing the city in bus lanes, and unleashing a mass timber building spree to end the affordable housing shortage and avert our coming climate catastrophe. He graduated from the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington. He lives in East Fremont and loves to explore the city on his bike.