The next stage of the Seattle Squeeze is coming, this time for your downtown buses
After everything, the viaduct switch-over went relatively smoothly, and now (toll-free) the tunnel has been moving thousands of trips every day.
With any luck, some of that ease will extend for the next chapter of "Seattle Squeeze" in what officials have called "the period of maximum constraint": evicting buses from the bus tunnel.
Starting March 23, 830 bus trips will be shifted from their routes through the downtown transit tunnel to surface streets downtown. After that, only light rail trains will travel underground, a permanent change that will make room for more major changes coming to the Seattle's downtown.
After the closure of the viaduct and making Third Avenue bus only, this is just the latest step in a major overhaul of the city's transportation infrastructure. The "period of maximum constraint" is expected to last a couple years, as a series of high-profile projects and changes get underway.
Removing the buses from the tunnel will make room for the expansion of the downtown Convention Center, and, in the longer term, more trains to service the expanded light-rail lines that will open in the coming years.
Getting buses out of the way of trains will help light rail run faster -- about every six minutes -- but it will likely extend the commute time for those on buses that now have to put up with congestion.
https://www.seattlepi.com/local/transportation/article/Seattle-Squeeze-constraint-bus-tunnel-light-rail-13634330.php?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailynewsletterspi&utm_term=spi
Originally this wasn't supposed to be done till the light rail was complete to Northgate. The belief was the trains could take up the slack of the buses.
I guess there's too much money involved in expanding the convention center.