Although successful in other routes, Seattle's RapidRide route in Ballard is anything but quick. Regularly languishing in traffic for nearly 15 minutes beyond schedule, the bus route has fallen victim to traffic signals not yet tuned for their passing, a problem that is not expected to be fixed until early 2013.

While the new RapidRide bus mostly lives up to its name in West Seattle, passengers on its sister route to Ballard are routinely stuck in traffic.

The service to Ballard, called the D Line, is delayed 10 to 15 minutes by late-afternoon car congestion leaving Belltown and winding through the crowded Uptown neighborhood, near Seattle Center.

That bottleneck is aggravated by traffic signals that haven't yet been re-timed by King County Metro Transit and the city of Seattle, to give the buses a longer or quicker green light.

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