High expenses and an outmoded service strategy are hindering King County Metro Transit, asserts a report issued today.
The findings are meant to provoke public debate, as County Council members try to pull Metro from a deep budget hole to prevent cuts in future bus rapid-transit service they promised to voters.
More:
The report urged Metro to scrap its policy that extends 40 percent of new service to the Eastside, 40 percent to the south county and 20 percent to Seattle and Shoreline. The policy was meant to assure suburban taxpayers ample service, but Muni League chairman Brad Meacham calls it “pretty outdated.” Buses should be deployed based on where people travel, the report says.
The 40/40/20 split is an absurd political agreement. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s got nothing to do with running Metro in an efficient way and everything to do with exporting transit dollars from the city to the ‘burbs. If folks in Covington or Duvall or Federal Way want an extra slice of the pie, they should tax themselves to get it.
People don’t travel between Seattle and the Eastside? Then why not just do away with the bridges instead of worrying about fixing or replacing them?
Now, whether a lot of us who live on one side of the lake and work on the other (or live in Carnation and work in Federal Way, or live in Bothell and work in Snoqualmie….or whatever) should be doing so, is quite another question.
Hey, wake up, Will. People in other parts of the County are still a part of the County.
I grew up on Queen Anne Hill. We had four bus lines up there to serve that area. I don’t think there was any spot on the hill that was more than two or three blocks from a bus line.
Now I live in the Fairwood area southeast of Renton, and the nearest bus line is two miles away.
When I worked in downtown Seattle a couple of years ago, it was a 15-minute drive to the nearest Park & Ride. If I didn’t get there by 6:20 a.m., the lot was full. And if I didn’t leave downtown by 4:30 or so, it was standing room only on the bus. The commute was just about an hour each way.
Now I work in Redmond, and I drive because riding Metro would take 2 1/2 hours and two transfers each way. Forget that!
How many more bus lines do they need on Queen Anne? How about a little service out here?
will–
How/who pays for Public Transportation is always a tough issue.
I tend to lean toward people who choose to live far away from where they work paying for the incremental cost of servicing them.
As pointed out by Pale Rider, there is a limit to the amount of inconvenience in terms of time required to use Public Transportation.
More & more companies are putting in flex hours and allowing employees to work from home. Plus, with all the upcoming layoffs, there will be less pressure on the system.
Frankly, I think Metro is trying to serve way too many people, is too big of a bureaucracy and should scale down their areas of service and cut administrative overhead.
In fact, what would happen if Metro went away??? It would force some employers out of the downtown Seattle funnel…not a bad thing.
The downtown property owners would sure be squealing however!
@ 2
All I’m talking about is something that makes more sense than a 40/40/20 split.
Will,
Your comment:
The 40/40/20 split is an absurd political agreement. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s got nothing to do with running Metro in an efficient way and everything to do with exporting transit dollars from the city to the ‘burbs. If folks in Covington or Duvall or Federal Way want an extra slice of the pie, they should tax themselves to get it.
Was spoken like a true racest. The reason that this agreement came into place was because South King county was getting almost no bus service. And we are paying the same taxes as the rest of the county. Today over one thrid of the people in King County live in the area that Metro calls Soouth King County. Over one third of the sales taxes that metro collects comes from South King County. We get lest than 15% of the Metro service. No the 40-40-20 new service split was a bad idea because it will take decades for the level of service in south king county to get to the level of the taxes. No a good idea would to be canceling routes in Seattle and adding them to other parts of the county. And if Seattle wants more bus they can tax themselves for them. Not taxea the rest of the county like they have been doing.
@2 Those buses on Queen Anne are full all day long not just at peak periods. In fact the Queen Anne routes are among the most heavily utilized buses in Metro’s system during all operating hours.
From my experience the commuter routes from the Eastside and South End aren’t the issue so much as the all-day suburban circulator routes that see little ridership.
The suburban service suffers because it is infrequent and slow. The service is slow because it attempts to wind through as many neighborhoods as possible on its way between the places people actually want to go in order to increase the service footprint.
I suspect the suburban service would see more ridership if it was restructured to actually be useful to people who need to get from point A to point B in a reasonable amount of time.
In any case the empty suburban midday buses are taking funds desperately needed in Seattle to relieve routes that are consistently overcrowded.
never take the bus
give a shit
will just pay my taxes and enjoy my car and my wonderful life
live on C. Hill, have good parking and a new car
I avoid rush hour any where, all the time
all is well with a little planning
fast, easy, convienent, door to door
i own my own business, with offices, get there early, no traffic, lave late, 4 day week
happy old guy
Also, the 2,3,4, and 13 do something routes like the 150, 174, and 152(South County Routes) do not. THey do not run on increasingly expensive diesel. I was looking at the WSDOT’s public transportation summary for last year. It is an annual document that puts out info on all public transit systems in this state from relative newcomers like Asotin County Transit in our state’s Southeast Corner to the big and old systems like King County Metro. Something interesting was that Metro carried 110 million riders on fixed-route service last year, with more hours added thanks to Transit Now, and burned LESS Diesel than they did in 2006. It was odd. That or those new hybrid buses are performing pretty good. I would like to see the 70 series routes put under wire like Metro proposed 25 years ago, and the suburbs can have the diesel buses freed up. The local buses for the 71,72,73 use Eastlake already(I believe), the Route 70-University District bus is electric traversing that route, and crosses via the University Bridge, which the 71, 72, and 73 use. Also proposed by Metro in the early 1980s with the electric trolleybus routes, was electrifying the-then 6-Aurora Village route. If they had gone through with it, maybe Metro’s Darkest Day would have been different. When a trolley de-wires, it just stops. Maybe the momentum would have still been enough to carry the bus over the railing.
But isn’t there a valid case to be made that the rest of the county deserves it’s shair of funding? The Gasoline Tax goes disproportionately do the Seattle area even though the whole state pays. Why sould the rest of King county not get more for Metro money?
What Will doesn’t understand is the 40/40/20 is a short-term measure meant to help the east and south play catchup do to years of boeing short-changed in terms of transit.
@10 DUE to not do to
but other than that, you actually made a good point.
@7: Yup – well the roads will be even more crowded at all times of the day…so you will be UNhappy and screwed soon too.
8 A lot of the routes you’re referring to use the freeway. It would seem that this would require special busways with trolley wires, or some kind of modification of the new hybrids to run on trolley juice part of the time–I’d suspect that would probably take quite a bit of re-engineering.
Two thoughts regarding diesel fuel. First, it looks like Ron Sims’ dream of conversion to biodiesel went into the dustbin along with Imperium Fuels. Secondly, it’s interesting (and a little distressing) that Metro’s forging ahead with its plans to hike fares “due to fuel costs” after the first of the year, even though the current price of fuel has dropped significantly. Not to say that it won’t likely be going up again sooner or later.
I live in Kirkland and am constantly aggravated that I live near a major road and cannot run ANY errands with the bus (unless I transfer 3 times to go 5 miles). Nor can my husband ride the bus to work (only 5 miles away). Because he is disabled, this means I drive him back and forth every day. In a van that doesn’t exactly get the best mileage. Why is it assumed that we all want to get to Seattle? There are a few major employers on the East Side, and many of us live relatively near work but buses don’t run between East Side commerce centers, and if they do they are so infrequent as to be laughable. I do believe we pay taxes here in Kirkland too…
1. When we moved to the Fairwood area 20 years ago, I was working in Tukwila. Then I went to work for Boeing and worked mostly in the Renton area, so that was all good. It was when I started contracting at Microsoft that the commute got bad. Since then I’ve alternated between MS and downtown Seattle. I’m a contractor, so I can’t “just move closer to where I work.”
2. We moved out of Seattle because we couldn’t afford any of the places we wanted to live in. Fairwood has turned out to be a very nice area, and we’ve enjoyed it (except for my commute).
3. Would I like to telecommute? You Bet! Unfortunately not that many employers offer that as an option yet.
4. I don’t think midday service in the burbs is that critcal (yet) but commute time is a different matter.
5. Don’t assume that everyone who lives outside Seattle works in Seattle. Transit service up the east side is desperately needed. It shouldn’t take me 2 1/2 times as long to get from here to Redmond as it does to get from here to Seattle.
Seattle has 60% of current Metro service. I am all in favor of more buses in Seattle, but South King in particular needs more service because so much of their ridership is in transit-dependent areas. Lets work on a new formula, but not just pander to political BS.
It’s got nothing to do with running Metro in an efficient way and everything to do with exporting transit dollars from the city to the ‘burbs
Actually, the ‘burbs subsidize transit in the City of Seattle with their sales tax dollars, which is why the 40/40/20 arrangment was put into place. Sorry to let facts get in the way of a good rant, though.
Some links to some photos a guy took of the documents with the expansion maps from 1983. Some other routes that were considered were the 11 and 27, former routes that went back to Cable Car days.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/v.....455785250/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/v.....455785250/
Now in Europe, Trolleybus technology continues to evolve, such as this example being built for Milan.
http://www.busworld.org/news/article/240
http://www.vossloh-kiepe.com/e.....anguage=en
Running the 70s via Eastlake might work out, but the West Seattle buses, I doubt they could use the high-level bridge. Even though prior to 1963, the old system crossed the Duwamish, but the old low level bridge was proven vulnerable on June 11, 1978.
Reading the opinions of the great idiots of this board are always entertaining. You guys could put all of your knowledge of Metro Transit into a thimble, and have room left over for a nice shot of espresso.
My favorite among the great idiocies is the last “fact”. That the “burbs” subsidizes the city.
Dude, the federal government subsidizes the system more than the taxpayers in King County.
Could any of you geniuses have been logical enough to mention that the city of Seattle is built and designed for mass transit, and that the “burbs” were designed around the use of personal vehicles? Ballard and Lecshi had streetcars before they had paved roads. Do any of you geniuses know why Ballard, Fremont, and Phinney Ridge have slowly curving roads? Because they used to be streetcar routes BEFORE they were roads.
I also found the guy who says that when the trolley’s “dewire” they just stop. Yeah…right.
http://seattletransitblog.com/.....aded-word/
Again, sorry to interject facts into rants. The rest of King County subsidizes Metro for the city of Seattle. The west region of Metro (i.e. Seattle) gets 58% of the service and generates 42% of the revenue.
Now, if you want to debate about whether having more service in Seattle is a good thing, that’s a valid question. But for Will and others to say that the city is subsidizing Metro for the rest of the county is complete and utter bullshit. It’s the other way around, and facts matter.