Seaview Ave residents lobbying for regular bus service

Meghan Walker Ballard

There’s a big section of Ballard that isn’t served by city buses, but a group of Ballardites are trying to change that.

Residents along Seaview Ave NW and Sunset Hill working with King County Metro and King County Councilmember Jeanne Kohl-Welles have created a survey to determine transportation needs of those who live in western Ballard. There’s currently no bus service to Golden Gardens or Shilshole Marina area, so the survey should help identify whether that should change.

Sunset Hill resident Sylvia Vikingstad lives in Sunset West condos on Seaview Ave, and says it’s been six years since they’ve had a regular bus service.

“We feel at a loss as to bus service down here,” Vikingstad told My Ballard. “A lot of us are seniors here, and we like to be able to ride a bus to get downtown.” Right now, the closest bus to downtown is at 32nd, which is quite a long walk for residents on Seaview Ave.

Vikingstad says it would be ideal to have a bus running two to three times daily — weekends included.

“Buses on the weekends would allow us to go to the Ballard Farmer’s Market, Nordic Museum and the Locks. All these places are not accessible [by bus] from where we are.” She added that the live-aboard community at Shilshole Marina would also greatly benefit from having a regular bus line.

The survey will be live for another two to three weeks, after which King County Metro will compile the results.

Photo from Google Maps

40 thoughts to “Seaview Ave residents lobbying for regular bus service”

  1. The lack of bus service to Golden Gardens is ridiculous. It’s one of the city’s gems but relatively isolated.

    Also, keep your dogs off the beach as it is illegal to have them there.
    GG beach is a wildlife preserve, and the city provided a dog area in the park above. Leave your yappy dog baby or aggressive low-IQ accessory item pit bull off the beach please, as the birds and other wildlife are easily upset. Thanks!

      1. I think you are just being contrarian for its own sake. We all need to share the beaches and as the population increases, the dogs become more and more of a nuisance, especially if untrained or unleashed. This is simple courtesy and common sense. Thank you.

        1. I do agree that dogs are a problem there, and I’m a dog owner. The off-leash dogs can definitely be a nuisance, and their owners often act entitled, as if laws don’t apply to their dog for some reason. However, I was actually referring to the human noise and drunken chaos that takes place on any given nice Summer day.

          I do also agree there should be good bus access to that neighborhood.

          1. At the risk of being insulted by trolls I will admit to being a cat lover, however, my friends are dog owners and I do like their dogs very much. Thank you and hope to see you at the beach :)

    3. You’re not fooling anybody, sockmaster. Just pick one handle and stick to it. Always pretending to be some model persona for propaganda purposes is transparently fake.

      How can I tell? First, hijacking. WTF does any of this have to do with dogs? Nothing. But you’re obsessed with dogs. So you have to veer off topic and bitch about dogs. You can’t help yourself. And then your language. Have we heard “dog baby” before? Yes, about a thousand times, right here. “low-IQ accessory”? Yep, that’s the sockmaster.

      Surprised you didn’t say something idiotic about testosterone and soy. But you will now, in 3… 2… 1…

  2. We would LOVE a bus to serve 32nd NW beyond the morning & eve express. We have to drive everywhere as the powers-that-be are building sky-rises on parking lots and taking away street parking. The Seaview Ave bus can also serve 32nd NW and we can all get downtown and elsewhere.

    1. An all day bus was attempted on 32nd a few years back but the bus was empty on 99% of runs. A simple extension of maybe half of the runs by the #44 is what is needed. That was standard for years when the #30 went from Ballard to the U District.

    2. I believe the adage is to get out of your car-take the bus,walk,bike,l would love to go downtown by bus but we need one along Seaview

  3. What is needed is a shuttle that would circle up 32nd, down Golden Gardens Dr, Shilso back to 32nd. Allow riders to transfer to rts 44 and 29

      1. NO! What Mgb is saying is that not enough people used the 17, when it was a regularly scheduled route on 32nd NW, to justify the cost of running the service. After workers rode to work there was only a handful of riders utilizing the route which did not justify the cost of continuing operation between Golden Gardens and Market Street on 32nd Avenue. I assume the same to be true for the GG to 32nd route. As a taxpayer (as I assume you are) I believe the city wastes enough taxpayer money without running unnecessary bus service.

      1. actually if they bought 11 or more years ago, there was also no bus service.

        It only existed between 2007-2010 and ended because of low ridership

  5. Yeah, a bus service here would be great! I live in downtown Ballard and would love to spend a day relaxing at Golden Gardens when the weather is pleasant, but unfortunately, I don’t want to carry bags of beach items all that way and back.

    But how long would it take before this bus would be used and abused by the junkies? Most likely it would bring more crime and property damage to Golden Gardens, so unfortunately, this is why we can’t have nice things.

    3. Wow, your post actually started off on topic with actual substance…then it spiraled into off-topic anti-homeless drivel pretty quickly.

      I had hopes for you Mr. Sockpuppet!

      1. Understandable mistake, what with John Smith going off topic with the very first post on several threads, constantly hijacking threads to complain about “junkies” and how much he hates dogs. Sounds exactly like a clone of Lever or Preston or Avril, sockpuppeting. But guess what!

        “John Smith” — whose real name really is John, he said so, and we should totally believe him! — said clearly, “I’m a successful 20 something with lots of friends, who is fit and loves to travel and have fun”. So there. See? It’s nothing like all those times that the troll said “I’m a former liberal…” or “I voted for O’Brien but…” Or that time socky took the name “Cyclist” and pretended to be this hardcore bike commuter who also happens to fear Big Soy poisoning manhood everywhere.. It’s not like that!

        John has told us, several times, “I’m a successful and popular guy, I have a busy schedule”. You know, how all the popular and successful people constantly do? It’s like an airtight alibi, like when you take your own calendar and write down that you defiantly wheren’t at that party that night. Incontrovertible!

        Looks, fake, yes. But totally legit. John would probably love to tell you himself about his success and popularity but he has a busy, busy schedule, out there enjoying his successfulness and his popularness. Perhaps later he’ll pop in to post 27 comments about his popularity and success and how much he hates dog mommies. Gosh I sure hope so because John has so many unique things to say, which are in no way carbon copies of everything guesty and Access Hollywood and Buxom Lady says.

        2. Yikes, elenchos. If you started charging all those people who live in your head rent free you could afford to take an economics class, or maybe travel to a city that isn’t overrun with junkie scum and their idiot hippie enablers. Might be a real life changer.

  7. Who are the newcomers which think that the bus route down 32nd only existed as far back as 11 years? The 17 bus was in existence when I was a child. It was in existence when my father was a child in Sunset Hill, and he was born in 1918. In fact, there were also trolleys on Sunset Hill. One went across 59th.
    There’s no public transportation from 24th to the waterfront. Of course, there are no elderly or disabled people who require busses. ( Sarcasm alert).

    1. The 17 DOES still exist. I literally take it every day to work and back. It’s just that it is no exclusively a commuter express bus. Just FYI not sure if you’re aware or not.

    2. Thanks, Jules! I hope the 17 will return someday. I won’t hold my breath, but will keep my fingers crossed. We deserve to be able to travel on the weekends, too.

  8. i’d be careful what you wish for – in theory it would be great to have bus service to GG, etc. but then there would be even more bums and crazed junkies around.

  11. Seaview Ave has had some bus service in the recent past. It was called Route 46. Here’s the schedule from 2010: http://web.archive.org/web/20100113061320/http://metro.kingcounty.gov:80/tops/bus/schedules/s046_0_.html

    It started at the intersection of Seaview Ave/Seaview Pl (basically the entrance to Golden Gardens), running 13 times every weekday as of 2010. It went on through central Ballard, connecting to UW in peak commute hours and Fremont the rest of the day.

    The problem is that nobody used it. I occasionally hopped on the 46 from my home in east Ballard to my job in Fremont when it happened to show up before the 28 (which shared the same route for that part). When I did, I was usually the only person on the bus. Sometimes there were one or two other people.

    Metro eventually cut that route in 2012 when they restructured Ballard-area bus service around the new RapidRide D Line.

    My question to the people running the survey about this service would be: what changed? The bus was basically empty before, and was cancelled for good reason. Have there been enough new homes constructed and/or new liveaboards at the marina that we could reasonably expect a revived Route 46 to be even half full? It’s one thing to fill out a survey saying you would use a bus, and another thing entirely to actually use it on a regular basis.

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