Kirkland reviews King County Metro RapidRide K Line plan, schedule for letters of support

Kirkland city officials and King County Metro staff presented the RapidRide K Line plan to the City Council during a Feb. 18 study session, outlining a 16-mile route with 35 station pairs, proposed speed and reliability treatments, and the schedule to seek federal Small Starts funding. Metro and city staff said they will return to the council on March 4 and March 18 for record-of-support memos and to request a formal letter of support for the locally preferred alternative.

The briefing matters because the K Line — a RapidRide bus-rapid-transit corridor Metro says would run every 10 to 15 minutes across much of the Eastside — would change how transit serves Kirkland neighborhoods, affect travel times and operating costs, and require local decisions about lane use, curb changes and property impacts.

Ryan Whitney, K Line line lead for King County Metro, told council the K Line is envisioned as “light rail on wheels,” with RapidRide 2 station standards, real-time signs and off-board fare capability at larger stops. Metro described the project as a 16-mile corridor with 35 station pairs; Kirkland would receive 18 stations. Metro estimates the investment across Kirkland and Bellevue would cut round-trip travel times substantially — “time savings of 26 and a half minutes in the southbound direction, 20 and a half minutes in the northbound direction,” Whitney said — and translate to about $2 million in annual operating-cost savings for Metro because buses could complete the route faster.

Metro staff said station amenities would include shelters, lighting, bicycle parking and real-time information displays; all stations would have all-door boarding. Metro also described an “access to transit” component: staff identified eight locations along the corridor for walking, biking and crossing improvements to connect people to K Line stations.

Speed-and-reliability proposals discussed at length include transit-signal priority, queue jumps at specific intersections, and dedicated bus lanes. Metro said the recommended split for the corridor currently is under 1% exclusive bus-only lanes, about 15% business-access-and-transit (BAT) lanes and roughly 84% mixed-traffic operation. ‘‘There’s a long list of additional RapidRide lines waiting in the wings,’’ Kim Scribner, city project manager, said, and reaching the locally preferred alternative (LPA) milestone helps preserve the project’s place for federal funding.

Council and public focus shifted to specific proposed lane and intersection projects in Kirkland. Metro and city staff described a small eastbound BAT lane on Central Way between Fourth and Fifth streets and evaluated a queue-jump signal at Central Way and Sixth Street. They said the Fourth-to-Fifth block conversion would not remove on-street parking that uses curb pockets and that right turns could still be allowed in a BAT lane design.

In the Houghton area, Metro described a recommended southbound queue-jump or receiving lane near NE 100th Avenue and NE 60th Street (the Houghton/108 corridor). Staff said the Houghton corridor bottleneck at NE 60th/NE 108th is a principal cause of delay and that a receiving lane or queue jump at that signal could be tested; implementation would be conceptual and subject to further engineering and property constraints.

Multiple residents and business owners from the Houghton area urged caution and asked for more localized analysis. A business owner whose property abuts the proposed receiving lane warned that the plan would remove roughly half the parking at his site and could affect the viability of an existing coffee tenant; he urged staff to reexamine driveway grades and parking loss. Several neighbors and Houghton property owners asked council and Metro for more pedestrian-safety analysis and for time-saving studies that compare alternative lane-start/end points and signal options.

Council and Metro staff discussed duplication of service concerns and how Metro handles network restructuring when a RapidRide line is implemented. Whitney and Metro staff said RapidRide lines often bring additional service hours to meet frequency standards; when the K Line enters service Metro will run a formal two-year restructure process that reviews overlapping routes, underlying local stops and how to reallocate service hours. Katie Chalmers and Amanda Pleasant Brown of Metro added that Metro has a service-recovery plan adopted by the King County Council that directs the restoration of hours suspended during the pandemic, and that some of those recovered hours could be used instead of subtracting service from elsewhere.

On funding and schedule, Metro staff said completing the LPA commits the project to further design and environmental review and is the step that allows a Small Starts grant application. Whitney said the Federal Transit Administration’s Small Starts application deadline is Aug. 22 and Metro expects iterative federal ratings over several years. Metro also cited a recent $8 million Puget Sound Regional Council grant for design work and said Metro has opened quarterly meetings with FTA to track program rules and uncertainties. City staff said they will return to council in March with the record-of-support memos and a formal request for a letter of support on March 18.

Council members asked for technical memos and the quantitative analysis behind travel-time claims and lane-change benefits. Councilmember Paschal said he would like the time‑savings and modeling memos released before the council is asked to support specific lane conversions. Metro staff said traffic analysis memos and segment-by-segment time savings exist and that they would provide relevant memos to the council and public; they also noted some analyses may be updated as designs are refined.

Public engagement is ongoing: Metro said it completed phase 3 community engagement with more than 30 events and will return in March to present summarized feedback. City staff said they would expand information on the city website and provide visual simulations of the corridor to make the plan clearer for residents.

The council did not take a vote during the briefing. The immediate next steps are: Metro and city staff will provide technical memos and community-engagement summaries to the council, bring record-of-support memos on March 4, and return March 18 for a request for a formal letter of support for the LPA and for submission toward the federal Small Starts process. Council members and Metro staff said they would continue to refine designs to reduce business and property impacts and evaluate time-of-day restrictions, alternatives to full-time BAT lanes and whether queue jumps or receiving lanes would be preferable at specific intersections.

Why this matters: the K Line would change travel times and the local transit network in Kirkland, affect nearby businesses and properties where lane conversions are proposed, and enter Metro’s federal funding pipeline if council and partner agencies approve the LPA and letters of support. Residents and businesses in Houghton and downtown Kirkland pushed council to ensure that Metro’s engineering studies and traffic memos are available before any final local endorsement.

City and Metro staff provided contacts and said more detailed memos and updated designs will be posted to the project web pages before the March decisions.