Metro considering request for new Madison Park bus bench

A request is in at King County Metro to install a bus bench at 42nd Avenue East and East Madison Street.

Resident and neighborhood advocate Reg Newbeck had pushed for a Metro bench at the bus stop south of East Madison, after two private benches were removed in that area. One was removed when Salon in the Park closed, he said, and Pharmaca removed the other due to people sleeping on it.

“That bench was being used by people who took the bus all the time,” he said.

Newbeck inquired about getting a Metro bench at the bus stop with Jay Vavra, a transportation planner with King County Metro’s Transit Route Facilities department.

Vavra has submitted a request with the design and construction department for a Metro bench between the bus stop sign and a tree just outside Madison Park Hardware, but the process could take a while.

The transportation planner tells MPT the Metro bench is a zone improvement project, and those can take 9-18 months to complete.

While easier than a bus shelter or Rapid Ride station, all zone improvement projects (ZIPs) “must have civil plans drawn up, reviewed at 30, 60 and 90 % before submitting to the jurisdiction (SDOT) for permitting, contractor selected and construction schedule formalized,” according to an email from Vavra.

If there are enough similar projects in the pipeline, they could be bundled into a single package, and then the work would likely be completed in just a few months.