Summer has finally reached Seattle: The sun is out, the water is less chilly, and thanks to Amazon’s summer intern program, the city just grew by about 2,000 people.
That’s the estimate thrown out by The Seattle Times. Amazon isn’t disclosing how many interns were hired this summer but the number is high enough to cause King County Metro a bit of a headache.
Times reporter David Gutman first noted the influx of interns, sporting their signature Amazon backpacks and crowding Route 70, one of the county’s busiest bus lines. It runs from the University of Washington campus, where 900 Amazon interns are staying for the summer, to downtown Seattle via Amazon’s campus in South Lake Union.
UW’s temporary residents only comprise a fraction of the total interns that will be working out of Amazon’s downtown headquarters this summer.
King County Metro spokesperson Scott Gutierrez told GeekWire that it added two busses to route 70 on Wednesday following reports of overcrowding, which it said was due to interns commuting to South Lake Union employers.
“Due to just overall growth in South Lake Union we have actually seen it pick up quite a bit over the past few summers as well, not just because of Amazon’s internship program but other summer internship programs as well,” Gutierrez said.
He said Metro also bumped up the number of buses serving Route 70 last summer to 16, and that new number remained for the rest of the year. With the new additions, there are now 18 buses serving the route during peak hours with a bus coming every 7 to 8 minutes.
“We’re looking at it to figure out all the factors that may be adding to it,” he said. “We’re watching it closely and we’ll adjust if necessary.”
Amazon is also operating private shuttles from the UW to its campus to help transport interns, but the Times reported those shuttles were also overcrowded Wednesday morning.
The Metro Department is increasing bus service to cope with Seattle’s rapidly-growing population, driven in part by Amazon adding jobs at a break-neck pace.
Despite the additions, the blistering pace of growth in Seattle can still overwhelm the transit system. In the Times’ piece, some riders reported seeing up to six buses whiz by their stops without picking anyone up because they were overcrowded
