Comments on: The Triplett Metro Plan (I)

By: The Triplett Metro Plan (VI): Conclusions - Seattle Transit Blog

The Triplett Metro Plan (VI): Conclusions - Seattle Transit Blog — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:55:12 +0000

[...] Part I: Introduction [...]

By: The Triplett Metro Plan (V): Service Suspensions - Seattle Transit Blog

The Triplett Metro Plan (V): Service Suspensions - Seattle Transit Blog — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 11:52:00 +0000

[...] final $90m of the $501m, four-year Metro budget hole is covered by a 9% route-by-route service suspension. As we reported yesterday, any potential [...]

By: The Triplett Metro Plan (III): Tax Shifts and Financial Engineering - Seattle Transit Blog

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:24:18 +0000

[...] the chart in Part I indicates, $40m is to come from spending part of Metro’s operating reserve. Metro currently [...]

By: Christopher Stefan

Christopher Stefan — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 20:19:10 +0000

Actually I think at least 5 votes could be found for getting rid of 40/40/20. There is growing recognition even in the suburbs and rural areas that it isn’t working.

By: Bernie

Bernie — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 20:12:53 +0000

Ridership-based cuts are in the same boat as eliminating the 40/40/20 rule: necessary, but more or less impossible.

Route changes based on performance criteria (more than just ridership and fare recovery) are an on going process at Metro. Replacing 40/40/20 with something that is more performance oriented and based on some form of sub area equity can and should be addressed after we seat a new County Council and Executive. It won’t happen over night which is why this plan needs to be ready to sign off on as soon as the new executive takes office. It’s a plan for the present which buys time to plan for the future.

By: Mike Orr

Mike Orr — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 20:00:40 +0000

Ridership-cuts would be better than across-the-board cuts, but that would lead to a protracted battle between the various cities who don’t want to lose “their” service. That would just delay the cuts until the payroll checks start bouncing, at which point they’d have to make an across-the-board cut anyway, one probably more disruptive because it wasn’t planned out.

Ridership-based cuts are in the same boat as eliminating the 40/40/20 rule: necessary, but more or less impossible.

By: Bernie

Bernie — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:06:04 +0000

Folks here were all fire sure that Seattle was going to be doubly hurt by service reductions being held to the 40/40/20 and then reinstated according to that ratio. That proved to be irrational worrying and I think this is in the same vein. The plan revolves around reductions during periods of lowest demand. Cutting service during a time of day when extra buses have been added would be silly. I think you can take any bus numbers that are printed out on the same route map and figure that service area will be lumped together with respect to the 9% cut. Of course the extra peak buses will result in the elimination of a proportionate number of off peak runs.

Special service cooperatives are exempt from the plan. So, if WSDOT or City of Seattle is willing to put in cash to help offset service to mitigate construction delays caused by the viaduct that wouldn’t be affected.

The metro peak only routes I’m thinking of are those like the 215 to North Bend. Although with the 214 that route has 16 buses morning and evening would only see a reduction of one or two time slots. Again this seems perfectly reasonable when you consider the 214/215 as a combined route. It would probably make the most sense to cut a couple of the 214 runs since the 215 is extended service and only has 6 runs AM and PM. You just have to have some faith that our County Executive and Metro are doing the best with a tough situation and not trying to screw over one population or sub area.

By: Al

Al — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:06:45 +0000

Bernie – the 54x does not run the same route as the 54. The 54 runs California and the 54x is a limited express only route that diverges onto Fauntleroy during peak a.m. and p.m. hours. Both could be reduced 9%. This would be a huge issue (referring to all bus routes b/t West Seattle and downtown) for West Seattle – we are going to have a major, major disruption to our routes shortly (starting in 2010) for the Viaduct re-work, whatever happends with the tunnel irregardless, and to tell us that hey, your traffic will be worse for the next 5 years, you will not get new transit only lanes (exits/onramps do NOT count), RR will be delayed and now you’ll have LESS bus service! Just fantastic. Read = more people driving.

By: The Triplett Metro Plan (II) - Seattle Transit Blog

The Triplett Metro Plan (II) - Seattle Transit Blog — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 12:47:27 +0000

[...] Note: The first installment in this series is here. [...]

By: Patrick

Patrick — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 05:27:25 +0000

I was under the impression that those buses were going to be replaced by stimulus money

By: Bernie

Bernie — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 03:15:12 +0000

I don’t consider the 54 Express to be peak only because it’s part of the 54 which runs all day and I don’t see any reason to believe that Triplett’s plan would single out the 54 Express for a 9% cut. I believe that 9% applies to the whole route; not the regular route and the 54 Express.

By: Lloyd

Lloyd — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 02:47:11 +0000

“Most of the Peak Only buses are ST”

Really? Tell that to the folks on the 54 Express, 56 Express, the 57, the 76, 77, and 79, the 2 Express and many other in-city Metro Peak Hour Routes.

By: Bernie

Bernie — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 02:42:00 +0000

Van pools don’t benefit a select few any more than Central Link benefits a select “few”. I say “few” because the reach of Central Link is to relatively few compared to everyone in the county that can be served by a van pool. Van pools are the best fare recovery option by far for anything Metro does (something like 60%). It also is extremely effective in reducing vehicle miles traveled. They tend to serve long distance commuter, there’s no dead head miles and there’s very little labor and management cost involved. And because there’s so little operational cost there’s really no savings to be had here. In fact replacing many rural routes with more van pools would achieve a savings.

By: "Bus fan"

"Bus fan" — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 02:22:49 +0000

“Raiding nearly every reserve for future bus replacement and defering maintenance takes care of over half the shortfall, but at what price? Dirty, worn out buses, in several years, and little money set aside to buy new ones?”

The Gillig diesel buses are already 14 years old, how much longer are they going to keep these aging units operational?

Well, there’s the aging Bredas who are already at 19. But Metro needs to keep their bumper truck staff busy…

By: Brad

Brad — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 02:21:20 +0000

I am always wondering why there aren’t cuts in Vanpools? Maybe there’s not much in the way of expense there, but it seems like they benefit a select few. They seem like an obvious choice for cuts.

By: Christopher Stefan

Christopher Stefan — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 23:53:39 +0000

I knew the Phillips plan was hitting various reserves more quickly than either the council or Triplett’s plan. However in many details what the council has proposed and what Phillips proposed were largely similar.

As for the fleet replacement surplus, my understanding is this is a true surplus (in excess of fleet replacement needs) that pretty much all of the plans on the table will spend. My impression was the council plan didn’t touch money for actual fleet replacement needs whereas Triplett’s plan would raid some of those funds as well.

The Council plan has absolutely no details on how the their cuts would be applied. Have you seen something more specific?

Hmm, you’re right. I think I may have read/heard a quote from Dunn about this but I’m not sure.

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 23:48:06 +0000

Also, closing Target an hour early has many different effects than cutting a route an hour early.

By: Bernie

Bernie — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 23:20:19 +0000

Can’t mid-day frequencies be cut?

This is exactly what the Triplett plan does. Spreading the cuts over all of the routes isn’t as illogical as it sounds. The high ridership routes are a greater proportion of total service hours. That’s to say that if you tried to focus all the cuts on low ridership routes the percentage cut would likely be more like a 20-30% reduction in their service to achieve the same dollar amount of saving. And this is on top of the fact that these routes started out with less frequent service to begin with.

Now contrast that with a route like the 7. It has over 100 trips daily in each direction. A 9% cut means eliminating ten of those runs. Ridership, while still strong is less than half off peak and nights than during peak hours. The 9% reduction in service could be accomplished by increasing headways from 10 minutes to 20 minutes between 1PM to 4PM. Contrast that with low ridership routes that are already 30 minutes to an hour or more and it seems like a pretty equitable way to share the pain.

But I would ask, can’t low-ridership routes be combined?

Combined with what? If it’s a low ridership route there probably isn’t an alternate that serves the same need.

By: Martin H. Duke

Martin H. Duke — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 23:06:00 +0000

My point is that Metro’s objective has never been solely to maximize efficiency, and to suddenly pretend that it’s the alpha and omega of route planning is nonsense.

There are tons of legitimate objectives beyond simply maximizing the number of boardings per a given unit of spending. For starters, reducing VMT, which favors keeping a lot of the really long-haul routes from Snoqualmie and such.

I’m very sympathetic to the productivity argument, and I don’t know where you live, but I’m getting tired of the very convenient (and arrogant) Seattle-centric view that boardings are all that matter and any attempt to consider other objectives is “illogical” or “insanity.”

By: Ryan

Ryan — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 22:37:41 +0000

It is worth asking, but as you mention, that’s a problem for another day.

But I would ask, can’t low-ridership routes be combined? Can’t mid-day frequencies be cut? You can still effectively serve the “need” population without sacrificing everyone.