I am less excited about Redmond Ridge, Novelty Hill, the Sammamish Plateau, and the development at Snoqualmie. The routes serving these areas are generally dogs. And why not, the developments there encourage car use for any trip. And I am really not that excited about building more park and rides at 30-60K a stall.

There is a wealth of information in this annual Metro report from 2007. On page 13 of the pdf you will see a comparison of how Metro measures success in each subarea. You will see that the standards for the West subarea are much higher.

http://transit.metrokc.gov/am/reports/2007/2007-RtPerf-PeerComp.pdf

Double checking the math from http://dor.wa.gov/docs/reports/Local_Retail_Sales/allcy07.pdf:

Shoreline: 761,015,623
Lake Forest Park: 66,793,186

Total sales: 827,808,809
* 0.009 transit tax = 7,450,279.28 = ~$7.5m

Which is a much smaller contribution than Seattle’s $153m, yeah.

Other than that it looks good.

The fares being raised doesn’t have much to do with subsidy or Seattle vs. the rest of King. There’s just not enough revenue to fund current bus service, and raising fares doesn’t actually fix the problem. So we’re probably talking future cuts in service, new taxing authority for KC Metro, support from the state, massive delays to RapidRide, a complete halt on optional capital projects (like bus shelters or new overhead wires), and (the component we’re talking about) fare increases.

I think raising fares outside of Seattle just wouldn’t generate enough revenue. And it brings up fairness questions since they do pay more taxes, as this thread has illustrated. Finally, we’d have to educate riders and operators around the county about a new fare structure.

One thing I advocate along the lines of what you suggest, is making a two-zone off-peak fare that’s higher than the one-zone off-peak. Right now one- and two-zone offpeak routes are the same fare.

Raising taxes is not an option without changing state law, which I have heard is being pursued. Cutting service isn’t on the table yet, but once it is I doubt we can get to safe pastured just by cutting the obvious and under-performing routes on the Eastside. Hopefully the cuts won’t be as political as 40-40-20, but there’s no doubt that Seattle would be hit too.

In terms of a Seattle-only bus system… I guess there’s always a reason to question the status quo, but you can imagine the start-up costs would be tremendous and this wouldn’t really be on the table for many years. I don’t think anyone is anxious to start a new governance structure under falling tax receipts and erratic diesel prices — not to mention a multiple year backlog of bus orders.

I have a hard time getting too passionate about fare increases for two reasons. First and selfishly, I have an employer provided bus pass. Second, I am hearing from all over the place that RapidRide is completely un-doable. Metro completely failing to deliver a major investment that it promised to voters is a lot more troubling to me than a fare increase that almost every other major transit system has had to suffer through.

2007 tax receipts for Metro total: $427,579,378.18
2007 fare revenue for Metro total: $85.4m
Metro total: ~$513m

2007 tax receipts for West Subarea: $160,724,889.57
2007 fare revenue for West Subarea: $55.6M
West Subarea total: ~$216m

(per http://dor.wa.gov/docs/reports/2007/ltd2007/Table3-2007.pdf and http://dor.wa.gov/docs/reports/Local_Retail_Sales/allcy07.pdf)

West Subarea / Metro revenue: 42.2%

Total Metro service hours: 2,194,542
West Subarea service hours: 1,273,461

(per http://transit.metrokc.gov/am/reports/2007/2007-RtPerf-PeerComp.pdf)

West Subarea / Metro service: 58.0%

Note: The revenue figures apparently include capital programs while the service figures do not. I do not know where the capital programs are focused on, or where to get information on that number. It is probably public.

Multimodal man and Matt, do these numbers look right?

One major difference I spot is that this site reports $428m in sales tax revenue for Metro (see http://dor.wa.gov/docs/reports/2007/ltd2007/Table3-2007.pdf). A KCDOT report says that the sale tax receipts were $322m (see http://transit.metrokc.gov/am/reports/2007/2007-KCDOTAnnualReport.pdf). I cannot explain the discrepancy — can you? (Edit: It looks as though the second document doesn’t include capital investments. Breaking that out would be tiring.)

Using Department of Revenue figures the subsidy is even higher for Seattle:

2007 tax receipts for Metro: $427,579,378.18
2007 tax receipts for West Subarea: $160,724,889.57

(West Subarea pays 37.5% of the sales tax revenue.)

Actually, I wouldn’t mind Seattle separating themselves from the county when it comes to buses. In-city transit is a completely different beast than suburban commuting buses, and the taxes and fares should reflect this.

I personally think it’s fine that Seattle is subsidized by King County — and probably better for the region and congestion. I was just correcting some other bloggers who were claiming the opposite.

And of course, Seattle subsidizing King County is the same argument you and other are making just flipped around.

As for all those taxes coming from King County, well, without Seattle that real estate in the county would be a lot less pricey.

Yes, the other subareas subsidize Seattle. That is why they like 40-40-20. But two more data points to look at: divide total subsidy from other subareas by total West Subarea riders. Also take the total subsidy per subarea and divide by total riders in each subarea. You will find that hands down investing a dollar of sales tax in Seattle produces far more riders than a dollar of sales tax does in East King County or South King County.

Please look more carefully at the Route Performance Report to fact-check your statement concerning peak and off-peak routes (the statement was made that if it if cost-effectiveness was only measure we would have peak-only service). You will see many loser peak only routes. Look at the Route 45 or 46. How about the 170 or 250? Now look at the 253 or 15 in the off-peak. Big difference. The route performance report does not look at the riders per platform hour which take into account deadheads. Peak routes like from Issaquah Highlands have a fair amount of deadhead time. They would not look as attractive as this report makes them to be if it was reporting total cost. Good route design and mixed land uses suggest that all-day service can be just as effective as peak-only service.

Cheers!

Where do you get your figures for the North/West subarea contribution for sales taxes?

AJ and I tried to calculate these numbers from Seattle documents (ignoring Shoreline and Lake Forest Park), but our numbers seem to vastly disagree with your percentage. Though, with your figures, the subsidy to Seattle would be much higher than I had earlier stated in this thread.

I’m not saying that the 194 is evidence that Seattle is being subsidized — some other numbers prove that — I’m saying that as Seattle residents we get utility even out of those routes like the 194 that aren’t included in our subarea service hour counts. This increases the amount of service hours we’re getting in Seattle, taking the 58% number I brought up earlier to a higher ceiling.

Similar circumstance happen with Sound Transit. Seattle doesn’t pay a single dollar for ST Express bus service, but nearly all of the ST routes connect to downtown Seattle. All of this is fair, of course. There is a reason for these buses to come to Seattle without us paying for them — we’re the densest and richest part of the region. But from Seattle’s perspective, we do get a pretty good deal.