Route 40 Upgrades Finally Reach Finish Line, Despite Business Opposition
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Transit
Route 40 Upgrades Finally Reach Finish Line, Despite Business Opposition
By Ryan Packer
- October 30, 2026
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Getting to the point of a ribbon cutting on changes benefiting transit riders on the Route 40 meant persevering through more than five years of pushback on the project. (Ryan Packer)
Seattle and King County officials cut the ribbon on a suite of upgrades to Metro's workhorse Route 40 on Thursday – transit speed, reliability, and access improvements that have been in the works for the better part of a decade. The changes benefit around 9,000 daily transit riders traveling between Downtown Seattle, Fremont, Ballard, Crown Hill, and Northgate, but several key elements had faced significant opposition from business owners along the route.
Upgrades include three miles of business access and transit (BAT) lanes, targeted at some of the 40's biggest pinch points including stretches through the heart of Ballard, on either side of the Fremont Bridge, and along Westlake Avenue N. Sixteen bus stops were upgraded and more than 6,000 feet of new sidewalks were installed, with new crosswalks and curb ramps up and down the corridor.
"One of the busiest routes in King County – top five actually – has become faster, safer, and easier to use," King County Executive Girmay Zahilay said Thursday. "And for our riders, that means getting a little bit of time back and having a ride that they can count on. This is definitely worth celebrating and sharing gratitude with all of the teams who had so much to do with these improvements, as well as the community members who advocated for this."
Utility work that was able to happen at the same time as construction, including the replacement of 200 feet of water main, stretched out the implementation timeline, as did planning delays and budgetary turmoil. Backers of the 2015 Move Seattle Levy (which funded the project) had hoped to open the Route 40 upgrades as a RapidRide line in 2023, but ultimately scaled back the plan and abandoned the RapidRide branding in 2018 due to a budget crunch and worse federal transit funding outlook under the Trump administration.
The Route 40 upgrades targeted bus lanes along some of the route's most infamous stretches including through Fremont and Ballard and northbound Holman Road. (SDOT)
Dedicated road space for buses is what drew the most organized opposition, which continued through the start of construction. In 2021, The Urbanist first reported pushback on the project's initial design coming from Eugene Wasserman, President of the North Seattle Industrial Association. Wasserman has long been involved in the fight over completing the Missing Link of the Burke-Gilman Trail along Shilshole Way NW through Ballard and was one of the main opponents of the 2015 Levy to Move Seattle, which funded about 30% of the annual budget of the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT). In opposing the Route 40 project, he cited potential impacts on routes used by freight trucks due to reallocating street space.
"It appears to the Maritime/Industrial community that SDOT is willing to sacrifice the viability of maritime/industrial businesses and their employees so that Amazon workers can get to their offices 5 minutes earlier," Wasserman wrote at the time. "Removing the number of traffic lanes the project does will have a substantial impact on our maritime/industrial businesses and will assist in the increasing gentrification of our industrial area."
The idea of creating dedicated space for buses through Fremont...