The 111 used to run straight from Kennydale to downtown Seattle. Now it terminates at South Bellevue station, where riders transfer to light rail for the rest of the trip. In King County Metro's framing, the switch was simply an upgrade. The actual commute-time math tells a more complicated story.

Under the old route, a Kennydale-to-Westlake commute during morning rush hour ran about 40 minutes on average: 15 minutes to the I-90 interchange, 10 more across the bridge, and 15 from 4th Avenue to Westlake Center. The evening return ran closer to 50 minutes. Under the new routing, the same morning trip now averages about 60 minutes: 15 minutes to the interchange, 10 to South Bellevue station, a 5-minute average wait for a connection, and 30 minutes on light rail into Westlake. The evening commute runs closer to 70 minutes, pushed longest by a 30-minute light-rail leg back to South Bellevue before the bus even starts the drive home.

Light rail doesn't sit in traffic, and most of the added time comes from getting to and from the train rather than the ride itself. The detour off I-90 to Bellevue Way SE backs up badly during morning rush hour, and the bus has to clear a bottlenecked intersection before looping back to approach South Bellevue station from behind. Riders can watch a westbound train pull in while they're still stuck in gridlock outside the station. Mercer Island station was reportedly the original candidate for this transfer, which would have skipped the gridlocked detour entirely, but local opposition to buses terminating there all day pushed the transfer to South Bellevue instead.

Train frequency compounds the problem. Westbound trains run roughly every 10 minutes, prompting small sprints from bus to platform. Multiple riders have been seen muttering at cars cutting in front of the bus and jockeying for position to beat the doors. Once aboard, comfort has taken a real hit: the old 111 almost always had a seat for the whole ride, while the light-rail leg is frequently standing-room-only, to the point of being unable to board additional passengers at Chinatown and Judkins Park during the evening commute. Riders traveling with a bicycle are largely left standing in the aisle, since there isn't enough room to maneuver a bike to one of the wall hooks in a crowded car. Anyone with a bike, a wheelchair, or just bad knees needs the elevators at South Bellevue and Westlake, which are slow enough to cost a tight connection outright.

Counting only the extra 20 minutes understates the downgrade: riders also face less comfortable seating, a bottlenecked transfer, and standing-room-only crowding at rush hour. Taken together, those changes put the trip well below the old service rather than on equal footing. It shows in ridership: outside rush hour, 111 buses now run largely empty, and even peak-hour runs tend to sit around half-full where the route used to run standing-room-only in both directions. Riders who can reach Renton Transit Center are increasingly defaulting to the 101, which still runs the old direct route, at least for now. King County Metro is reportedly weighing whether to reroute the 101 to Rainier Beach station as well, which would extend the same transfer trade-off to the one direct alternative left.