Third Avenue is easily the most important transit corridor in all of Seattle. The street carries more than 52,000 passengers on weekdays via bus. That heavy load of riders translates into transit congestion where hundreds of buses operate along the corridor at peak hours using a complicated “skip stop” approach. A bus will stop every other block on the central portion of the spine even though every block has a bus stop to maximize capacity and throughput. While regionwide transit lowers pollution and climate emissions, concentrating so many routes on Third Avenue does make for localized impacts including pollution and noise.

In May, the Downtown Seattle Association followed up on an earlier visioning phase, releasing more complete options for a redesigned Third Avenue. The Downtown Seattle Association has put forth four divergent long-term concepts showing how the street might function with sidewalks and transit as the focus. Street changes could have impacts to the flow and operation of nearby streets as well. The concepts show where bike lanes and general purpose lanes may go. Additionally, the updated concepts also depict how the pedestrian realm could function on Third Avenue. Underpinning all of this is a storied analysis of peer cities, past planning efforts for Third Avenue, existing conditions, and projected future demand of Downtown streets.

Existing conditions

The busiest portion of Third Avenue stretches from Pike Street to Seneca Street where up to 290 buses operate per hour per direction. But the street remains fairly busy from Blanchard Street to James Street where buses converge and peel off of the street. This is depicted well in the image below:

Third Avenue is not just the busiest bus corridor in Seattle; it also happens to stand out as one of the busiest in North America, too. By a hair, Third Avenue edges out Vancouver’s Granville Street in terms of ridership. It does that, however, with a vastly higher number of peak hour bus trips. San Francisco’s Market Street, Denver’s 16th Street Mall, and Minneapolis’ Nicollet Mall also are peers to Third Avenue.

The street design between these differs substantially. Third Avenue currently has four vehicle lanes, which are largely restricted to buses along the core portion of the corridor. The pedestrian environment is somewhat narrow on some portions with sidewalks averaging about 19 feet per side. Vancouver, Minneapolis, and Denver all have smaller roadways for buses (two lanes) and wider average sidewalks (30 feet or more per side).