A Requiem for Seventy-Seven Bus Stops, part V: The Route 20

Dear Diary,

FINALLY!  Some of the photos that are the point of this page.

Near as I can tell, the seventy-nine bus stops in question have anywhere from zero to five amenities.  My photographs treat these amenities somewhat differently.

• Pavement.  In general, I was photographing upward, so my photos don't show at all whether the bus stop has noticeable paving.  However, this amenity is a requisite for the next, so any stop that has that also has this.
• Shelter.  I did take pains to photograph shelters.  This amenity is a requisite for the next.
  
• Art.  I didn't see any murals that seemed intended for the bus stops, or anything like that, but many Metro bus shelters include photos under the auspices of the Photographic Center Northwest, and that includes some shelters likely to be re-located soon.  I took pains to include excerpts in my photos.  Neither this nor the next two are requisites for any of the others.
  
• Trash cans.  I'm pretty sure I encountered none at the route 28 stops I visited first, but the only route for which I specifically took pains to photograph evidence of trash cans was the route 20, whose stops I visited last.  This may seem an odd sort of amenity, but I'm quite sure it's actually a significant expense of any route that includes it.
  
• Benches.  I took pains to photograph these.  All but one are metal, of the kind usual in Metro shelters.

Open Street Map shows bus stops, and identifies some by cross streets, but if it has stop numbers or other metadata, I can't find them.  I remember, some time since I got housed in March 2021, finding a bus stop map at King County Metro's website, but I can't find it again now, and don't know whether it had metadata either.

I took no notes while hiking, trusting a) that I wouldn't miss anything so big and obvious as a bus stop and b) that I'd be able to correlate my photos with Open Street Map.  The latter confidence was well-placed, partly because the "rider alert" signs attached to most of these stops turn out to be fairly rich in geographical detail.

The links usually point to my Google Drive's folder of the photo(s).

N 80th Street

N 80th Street, 1st Ave NE, and Woodlawn Ave NE were parts of the route 16 by October 1943.

One northbound stop:

• Stop # 17610, just east of the alley between Corliss Avenue N and Sunnyside Avenue N.

One southbound stop:

• Stop #17100, just west of Corliss Avenue N.  Has a shelter (hence paving), art, a bench, and a trash can.  Obviously worth showing you one of the photos, dear Diary:
  
   

1st Avenue NE

Two northbound stops:

• Stop #17600, just south of NE 80th Street.  Although I've waited at this stop for the route 20 several times, I managed to miss the stop while hiking north, and had to photograph it while going back south.
• Stop #17590, just north of NE 77th Street.
  

Two southbound stops:

• Stop #17110, just south of NE 80th Street.
• Stop #17120, just south of NE 77th Street.

Woodlawn Avenue NE

Two northbound stops:

• Stop #17570, just southeast of the alley between 2nd Ave NE and Latona Ave NE.  This is the library stop, north of Green Lake.  At this stop, whether by mistake or as a bad joke, the sign claims readers should sit tight, because the route 45 will detour from East Green Lake Drive N just for them.  At stop #17140, across the street from this one, the sign forecasts the stop's closure; I don't see how both can be right.
  
  
• Stop #17560, just south of the alley between NE 72nd Street and NE 71st Street.  This stop, unusually for a northbound stop anywhere in North Seattle, has a bench, and further unusually for any bus stop, the bench is wooden rather than metal.  I wonder whose actual property this bench is, and what will become of it when the stop is removed.  Someone was sitting on it when I was photographing, so the photo is oblique.
  
  
  

Two southbound stops:

• Stop #17140, somewhat southeast of Latona Ave NE.  Has all the amenities:
  
  
  
• Stop #17160, halfway between NE 71st Street and NE Ravenna Boulevard.  Has a bench adjacent to City of Seattle trash cans.

The next southbound stop, stop #17170 announced as 5th Ave NE but actually closer to 4th Ave NE, south of Green Lake, appears to need no requiem.  The sign says the route 62 is adopting it, and since the route 62 actually passes that spot along Woodlawn, there's no reason to doubt that.  That stop has pavement, a shelter, and a trash can.

NE Ravenna Boulevard

These fiddly bits of the route were actually part of the 26 route, not the 16, from at latest 1949 onward.

One northbound stop:

• Stop #26210, just northeast of Woodlawn Ave NE.  I always thought this was the schedule's little joke, never noticed an actual stop there when riding north, never noticed anyone board or exit there.  (I'm really not the most observant of people, dear Diary.)  So I was quite surprised Sunday, to find it really exists.

4th Avenue NE

One southbound stop:

• Stop #26220, just northeast of NE 65th Street.  This is an actual unpaved stop, somewhat unusual for this route.
  

2nd Avenue NE

One northbound stop:

• Stop #27160, north of Woodlawn Avenue NE.
  

Latona Avenue NE

Part of the route 20's path on Latona is the oldest part of the route.  Latona from NE 56th Street to NE 65th Street was first used for streetcars in 1908, according to Blanchard's Street Railway Era in Seattle, page 65.  The rest of Latona (and Thackeray, below) was in use for buses by January 1941.

The older northern part is apparently the likeliest of these parts of the route to be revived, although that isn't very likely at all.  As recently as 2020, Metro was apparently willing to return to the Meridian streetcar route (2-page PDF).  The problem is, the Seattle Department of Transportation believes the current pavement of NE 56th Street isn't hard enough to stand up to frequent buses, and considers hardening that pavement a low priority, which appears to me to be bureaucratic polite-speak for "Never".

Anyway, eight northbound stops:

• Stop #27150, just south of NE 65th Street.
• Stop #27140, just north of the line of NE 62nd Street.
• Stop #27130, just north of NE 60th Street.
• Stop #27120, just north of NE 58th Street.
• Stop #27100, just north of NE 54th Street.
• Stop #27090, just north of NE 52nd Street.
• Stop #27052, just south of NE 50th Street.  Has a trash can.
  
• Stop #27051, north of NE 45th Street.  When I was working in Ballard, in the spring of 2023, this was usually where I waited in the evening for the route 20 until it came or I gave up and walked.  Mildly unusually for a northbound stop, it has all the amenities except a bench.  So I had all kinds of fun trying to fish the schedule out of my satchel without setting the satchel down, because the pavement was rain-wet.  At least the art was diverting.
  
  
  
  
  

Five southbound stops:

• Stop #26230, south of NE 64th St.  This is where my hourlong waits for the route 26 happened.
  
• Stop #26240, north of NE 60th St.
• Stop #26250, just south of NE 59th St.
• Stop #26270, south of NE 55th St.  This is the stop for, according to Open Street Map, McDonald International Elementary School.  So it's the only one of these with amenities:  shelter, bench, art.
  
  
  
• Stop #26290, south of NE 51st St.

Thackeray Place NE

Two southbound stops:

• Stop #26301, just south of NE 50th Street.
• Stop #26302, just north of NE 45th Street.
   

And that's it, dear Diary.  That's the legacy of the route 20, and of the route 26 before it.  Kinda sad, isn't that?

I have to go find three 28 stops, one 73 stop, and figure out why my results on Lake City Way differed so from Open Street Map, before I can write the remaining parts of this page in you, dear Diary.  I hope to finish that today, but won't be surprised if it takes until tomorrow.  Happy hours, day and night, until then.