University St Station, Seattle Muncipal Archives

In the “we’re broke!” Press Release from Metro, a quote from outgoing King County Exec Ron Sims mentions $80 mn in capital project cuts, this is $15 million more than Sim’s mentioned last summer. I wanted to get to the bottom of what those cuts were, and I’ve been given a list from someone inside Exec’s office. Most of these were the same cancelled projects we heard about in September. An interesting exercise for the reader is comparing the list of cancelled projects below to the list of projects that Metro has requested stimulus money for.

• The Waterfront Streetcar maintence barn was cancelled, which should come as no surprise to anyone who reads this blog. I’m just surprised it wasn’t already considered cancelled.
• Metro had planned a contribution to the construction of the “Lander Street Overpass” over the BNSF lines, but the contribution will not be coming any longer. This one’s obvious, since the city has already shelved the project.
• Another cancelled project is a Downtown Seattle bus layover facility. That would have let Metro park buses during the day after they drop off commuters and pick them back up in the evening without having to leave downtown.  A similar Downtown Bellevue project has been reduced in scope
• Some ticket vending machines were cancelled, and I have been fearing that these cuts were for Rapid Ride’s ticket machines. My source confirms that most of these ticket machines were for Rapid Ride.
• A number of on-board cameras that were to be install on buses have been cancelled, and most of the “security lights” for park-and-rides have been postponed.
• Many BRT corridor improvements technology improvements, including the ticket machines on board the buses.
• Improvements to the vanpool distribution facility have been scaled back. Metro operates the nation’s largest vanpool/ridershare organization.
• Another $13 million in reductions the County Council has required them to make that have not been announced.
• 11 layoffs at the “capital investment” division.

Following up on what Martin wrote about Metro service cuts, I want to point out that the long-term impact of Metro’s expansion and contraction policies will likely reduce the cost-effectiveness of their service.

An hour of new service when the economy improves will result in lower ridership than an hour they cut now. In the graphs bgtothen made of ridership per annual service hour, there are 86 Metro routes. In the top half (43), only seven are shared with the south or east Metro subareas - thirty-seven are city routes alone. Metro’s most cost effective routes are all in Seattle.

If Metro wants to keep its costs from expanding further, these policies need to change. While there is, of course, a political reason for the 20-40-40 rule, it will only serve to cost the agency money in the future. I hope our King County Executive candidates take a stance on reducing this wasteful policy.

Photo by Oran

If you live and work in Seattle, the Metro budget crisis is probably worse than you realize.  According to my source, King County policy is to cut routes in proportion to the amount of service hours currently in each service area.

These numbers are off the top of my source’s head, but Seattle would take about 62% of the cuts, the Eastside 17%, and South King 21%.  Moreover, unless the routes are “suspended” for a short time, future increases would of course be subject to 20/40/40, resulting in a permanent shift of resources to the suburbs.

UPDATE: I finally dug up the policy statement that covers both this rule and 20/40/40.  Open this pdf and scroll to strategy IM-3.

Another interesting tidbit: “two-way” routes that serve two subareas count as 50% against each.  For instance, Seattle “pays” half the cost of the 150 and 271, while the Eastside would bear all the costs of the 229 or 257.

In the current context, that means the Seattle share of cuts may not come entirely out of one-digit and two-digit routes.