Nine blocks of paint. $4M dollars. Transformation for thousands of people.
It’s wild that painting nine blocks of lane comes with a $4 million price tag. Such an easy, effective change. It’s nice to see that the success looks like it will transfer to different routes as well.
It is $4 million and 9 blocks of paint, not $4 million to paint 9 blocks. SDOT also ran more buses to reduce headways, hung more signs, redesigned intersections, and so on.
Who could’ve guessed
And for the drivers? Alex Hudson, a senior policy advisor in Wilson’s office, pointed out to MyNorthwest that travel times for riders and drivers counter-intuitively often go down when you paint a bus lane. This is likely in part to the change in demand for driving on that road at that time. Time will tell, (and so will SDOT, because the Mayor is requiring it!) but this is the norm.
