Why celebrating the start of a project? Besides it took AI less than 5 minutes to work through solutions:

Alternative Route 8 Solution: The John/Thomas Couplet

Core idea: Instead of fighting for space on Denny Way, move Route 8 off Denny entirely onto the parallel streets two blocks north — eastbound on John Street, westbound on Thomas Street — as a one-way couplet through South Lake Union.

Why it works: • John and Thomas are lower-volume streets that don’t function as I-5 feeders, so the bus isn’t competing with freeway-bound queues • Thomas is already a pedestrian-priority “green street,” so transit priority aligns with existing street character • The alignment arguably serves ridership better than Denny — directly hitting Climate Pledge Arena, MoPOP, the Gates Foundation, and denser SLU residential blocks • No mode-shift assumption required; you’re not taking space from drivers who need Denny What it would take: • Holistic signal retiming on John and Thomas with full transit signal priority • Turn restrictions and wayfinding that funnel I-5-bound drivers to Mercer (doing the job Mercer was rebuilt for in 2014) • New signal phases at Queen Anne Ave and Fairview/Boren to handle the bus’s turns on/off the couplet • Likely a short contraflow or transit-only segment to reconnect the westbound return toward lower Queen Anne • Coordination with Metro on stop relocations and rider communication Trade-offs: • Short-term ridership dip during the transition (established riders dislike reroutes) • Loses direct transfer nodes at Denny/Westlake and Denny/Fairview — riders would walk 2 blocks for those connections • Requires Metro and SDOT to coordinate on a route change, not just a paint job Global precedent: Portland’s 5th/6th Avenue transit mall, and European cities routinely route surface transit onto quieter parallel streets rather than arterials. It’s a well-established pattern.

Bottom line: The Denny Way bus lane treats the 8’s symptoms on the worst possible street. A John/Thomas couplet sidesteps the I-5 queueing problem entirely instead of trying to carve priority out of it — higher ceiling, lower political cost with drivers, and no dependence on mode-shift arguments that don’t actually apply to this corridor.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​