Push to Water Down Route 40 Transit Upgrades Continues Through Construction » The Urbanist
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# Upgrades to speed up Route 40 through Fremont and Ballard, and to replace a 100-year-old water main, are well underway. But business advocates have continued to push for transit priority to be scaled back.

Construction on upgrades to the King County Metro Route 40 are well underway through the heart of Fremont, as any resident or recent visitor to the neighborhood can easily attest. With the $20.7 million bus improvement project also tackling the replacement of a 100-year-old water main along with sidewalk improvements and new curb ramps, work has been creating major disruptions for people using all modes of travel. Throughout this work, opponents have continued their push to scale back plans to create dedicated bus lanes for the Route 40 as part of the project.

A high-profile project from the 2015 Levy to Move Seattle, Route 40 upgrades originally had been promised to voters as a full upgrade to a RapidRide corridor.

The southbound BAT lane through Fremont remains one of the only mechanisms speeding up buses through the area and ensuring that riders don’t wait behind a line of general-purpose traffic when the Fremont drawbridge is raised. Even with these modest bus upgrades, the project is expected to decrease travel times from Ballard to Downtown by 14% to 17%, a big benefit for the fourth-busiest route in King County Metro’s network that sees nearly 9,000 riders every weekday.