A worker helps install benches for the newly opened Metro stops (Image: WSDOT)
(Image: WSDOT)
Another key element of the $455.3 million project to widen 520 and lid the busy freeway through Montlake is now in place. King County Metro is now serving the Montlake Lid’s bus stop center.
Service on the lid began Saturday, Metro says, serving routes 43 to Capitol Hill, 48 to Central District and Mt Baker, 255 to Kirkland Transit Center and Totem Lake Transit Center, 271 to Bellevue and Issaquah, 542 to Redmond, and 556 to Bellevue and Issaquah:
Metro is excited to offer four new bus stops as part of the state’s major SR 520 Montlake Lid project, offering easier connections for riders traveling between the Central District, East Capitol Hill, Montlake and the Eastside.
Around 13,500 riders use these routes daily. The new space offers three grassy acres and new trail connections to the Arboretum, East Montlake Park and the Montlake neighborhood.
“Reopening service at Montlake is a big step forward for regional transit,” King County Executive Shannon Braddock said in a statement. “These new stops restore vital connections that have been missing since 2019. It’s a win for access, convenience and connectivity across our region.”
Buses haven’t directly served the 520/Montlake Blv interchange since 2019 through years of construction on the expansion and new lid.
The activation of the project’s transit element is another step forward in balancing the sea of motor vehicle traffic that flows across the lid every day. CHS reported here in late 2024 as a new 520 bike/walk bridge opened as a late element of the project, joining the multiple new traffic lanes that opened earlier in the year across the new lid’s reconfiguration of the busy intersection of freeway and city streets.
The 520 replacement effort is now in its third and final phase. CHS reported here on the start of construction on WSDOT’s $1.4 billion Roanoke Lid and Portage Bay Bridge projects currently planned to wrap up in 2031.
$5 A MONTH TO HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE THIS SPRING
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.
Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for $5 a month -- or choose your level of support 
But no bike lanes around or across the new lid, or between the lightrail and bus connections. So anyone walking has to watch out for being overtaken by endless stream of bikes since this is also the access point for 520 bike lane.
That connection between SB stop for the 48 and the SR 520 stops sucks
Yeah pretty much still need to go up to UWMC for the 255/271/542 transfer to the 48 (and 43). As is the case with traffic engineering, we need to inconvenience and slow the bus riders for the speed and convenience of motorists, then act surprised why so many choose to clog up the roads driving solo instead of reducing traffic on the bus.
At least the trip from Capitol Hill to the Eastside is better by bus with this finally opening.