1998 Aurora Bridge Disaster

In November of 1998, Mark McLaughlin, the driver of a southbound 359X bus, was shot and killed by passenger Silas Garfield Cool as the bus was entering the Aurora Bridge. The passenger then shot himself as the bus careened off the bridge and landed on an apartment building in the Fremont neighborhood, over which the bridge passes before it crosses the Fremont Cut of the Lake Washington Ship Canal. Though there were dozens of passengers on board at the time, most reported only minor injuries, with only one additional passenger deceased (not counting the shooting deaths of the driver and the attacker).^[6]

1999-2013: Rebranding Effort

In response to the incident and the general unsavory reputation the route had experienced even prior to the incident, route 359 was retired and replaced three months later by route 358. In spite of the rebranding, the safety issues persisted; in 2011, drivers on route 358 wrote up 333^[7] "security incident reports", leading the Seattle Weekly to give the route the title of "Most Dangerous Bus Route in Seattle"^[8] After route 358 was replaced by the RapidRide E Line, security cameras were installed on all RapidRide buses and lighting was improved at stations, in part to address this problem.

2013-Present: RapidRide

In early 2013 King County Metro began construction on new enhanced bus stops, new bus stations and making upgrades to traffic signals along Aurora Ave N.^[9] Service on the RapidRide E Line was scheduled to start in Fall 2013 but the opening was delayed until February 15, 2014, to give crews more time to finish construction.^[10]

The only change made to the routing during the conversion to RapidRide was in Green Lake. Route 358 exited Highway 99 to serve stops on Linden Ave N, but a new bus stop on Aurora Ave N allows southbound buses to stay on the highway (northbound buses must still deviate).^[11]

King County Metro planned to begin service on the RapidRide E Line in September 2013, but the opening was pushed back several months to February 2014 due to delays in construction.^[10]

Since the implementation of RapidRide on the corridor, ridership has grown 35 percent and the E Line served an average of 15,800 riders on weekdays in spring 2015, the most of any Metro bus route.^[2]