When candidate Katie Wilson and a hundred transit advocates participated in the inaugural “Race The L8” event on July 10, 2025 — before the city installed a dedicated bus lane on Denny Way — the people on foot easily beat the bus.
Tuesday, Mayor Wilson and advocates took on the 8 for a rematch — and lost.
“Last summer, Seattleites raced the bus on foot and beat it,” the mayor said in her post marking the event. “This time around, with the lane up and running, it wasn’t even close.”
The race was fun but the real proof comes in the data.
It’s early, but Metro’s first reports are looking good. So far in September, Route 8’s eastbound on-time performance has clocked in at 78.2% for the route — just under the 80% bar and the best performance for the route in any month since the streets were clear of traffic at the height of the pandemic. It’s a preliminary, 8-point improvement over performance seen earlier this year prior to the Denny Changes and a massive improvement over the shockingly bad low of 53.1% for eastbound 8 coaches in June of 2025.
This week’s race stunt followed the late August completion of the $4 million overhaul of Denny Way including new stretches of bus only lane and reconfigured traffic flow for drivers headed to I-5.
Serving 7,000 daily riders, the route has suffered from heavy gridlock, with rush-hour buses crawling as slow as 3 mph, letting down riders for decades with the lowest on-time performance of any line in Seattle. While King County Metro sets a target of 80% on-time performance, Route 8 has historically fallen far short.
With the changes, the route is hoped to travel closer to 10 mph, effectively halving travel time between Seattle Center and Capitol Hill Station down to around 10 minutes.
Last night we celebrated the opening of our new dedicated bus lane for the 8 bus on Denny by doing the obvious thing: racing it again. Last summer, Seattleites raced the bus on foot and beat it. This time around, with the lane up and running, it wasn’t even close.
— Mayor Katie B. Wilson (@mayor.seattle.gov) September 9, 2026 at 10:30 AM
While the race was good fun, the metrics will be the final measure of success before similar changes are lined up for other corridors including 23rd Ave.
Ridership on the 8 should also climb. September will bring increased service to the optimized route as Seattle Transit Measure funding will boost Metro by adding 50 weekly trips to Route 8.
Subscribe to CHS to help 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