RapidRide K Line

Project notifications were sent to landowners along the K Line route during Phase 2 of community engagement. The next phase will include preliminary design, which will further identify any potential property impacts. Once a potential impact is identified, the property owner will be contacted. If property owners are not contacted, it means there is no planned impact to the property. No matter the impact level, all property owners along the route will continue to receive project notifications throughout the project lifecycle.

During the preliminary design phase, if the project team identifies a right-of-way need, the property owner is contacted directly by Metro (with support from city partners). Property owners can participate through the larger community engagement process and impacts to their property are not decided without a Metro conversation. Metro plans to identify these property impacts during the preliminary design phase starting in 2025. Affected property owners would be contacted by summer/fall of 2025.

Ridership projections were developed in 2019, however ridership trends have shifted following the COVID-19 pandemic which saw a national decrease in transit ridership. King County continues to see an increase in riders and some routes are back at (or near) previous ridership levels. The project team is revising ridership projections to reflect these new conditions and will have revised ridership for the K Line in early 2025.

For comparison, the RapidRide B Line which serves eastside cities of Bellevue and Redmond is reporting 76% ridership recovery (as of Oct. 2024). Route 250 is reporting 58% ridership recovery (as of Oct. 2024). Route 239 and 250, introduced in 2020, have seen ridership growth each year and are currently averaging 700+ and 2500+ average weekday boardings.

The projected travel times with proposed improvements for the K Line are 68 minutes for northbound travel (from Eastgate Park-and-Ride to Totem Lake Transit Center) and 70.1 minutes for southbound travel (from Totem Lake Transit Center to Eastgate Park-and-Ride).

By comparison, corridor travel times without any proposed improvements would be 88.5 minutes northbound and 96.5 minutes southbound.

Note: the travel times reported above are for the Weekday PM Peak Hour, which is typically 3 pm to 7 pm.

The new RapidRide K Line route will include a restructure of surrounding transit service. This restructure will include a separate engagement process with city partners and community, in order to identify local routes that should be included in the service restructure and how the new, proposed transit network can best meet community needs. A service restructure will aim to reduce duplication of service and deliver a unified transit network that will maximize frequency, coverage area and timely connections to other regional transit service.

The $120 million is the planning-level estimate to deliver RapidRide service to meet national and county standards for bus rapid transit. The project budget includes new and upgraded stations with enhanced passenger amenities, ADA compliant ramps and other access projects, such as sidewalks and new crosswalks. All new features will be designed provide safe and convenient access to bus stations, as well as transit priority improvements (new bus signal technology and transit lanes, etc.) to ensure the RapidRide service is fast, reliable and frequent.

The project budget is assumed to be a 50/50 split between federal funds and a local funding match, of $60 million each. The cost of operation is not included in the project budget.