SDOT Madison Corridor BRT
The project is projected to improve transit travel time by up to 35%, reduce variability between trips to less than 1 minute, and increase ridership by 70% to over 12,000 riders per day.
For the Seattle Department of Transportation, Nelson\Nygaard led a multidisciplinary effort to develop a 10% design for the Puget Sound region's first full-featured Bus Rapid Transit line. The Madison corridor was identified through the Nelson\Nygaard-led Seattle Transit Master Plan as a priority corridor for the development of high-capacity transit.
The study was both multidisciplinary and multimodal, with major urban design and bicycle route design components. Five rounds of outreach were conducted, including corridor-wide open houses, neighborhood-based charrettes and other workshops, web-based surveys, and stakeholder interviews. Based on this process of community input and on technical evaluation of a range of capital and service alternatives, we developed a draft Locally Preferred Alternative, which was adopted by the Seattle City Council. The FTA accepted the project into Small Starts Project Development, and the project received an overall high rating in the FTA Small Starts funding evaluation.
Upon adoption of the Locally Preferred Alternative, Nelson\Nygaard joined a team that advanced the project through preliminary engineering, environmental clearance, final design, and the FTA Small Starts process. Nelson\Nygaard led the preparation of the BRT transitway design, bikeway design, access to transit, and development of the signing and striping plans and bus station plans. Additionally, Nelson\Nygaard oversaw and coordinated the geotechnical analysis and traffic modeling, consisting of the BRT travel time and operations and intersection analysis.
In early 2021, the project was a $59.9 million Small Starts Grant, which enabled construction to begin before the end of 2021. When complete, the project will deliver fast, reliable, frequent transit service to the Madison corridor from 1st Avenue in downtown Seattle to First Hill, Capitol Hill, the Central District, and Madison Valley. The project is projected to improve transit travel time by up to 35%, reduce variability between trips to less than 1 minute, and increase ridership by 70% to over 12,000 riders per day.
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