This is part three of a three-part series investigating city-funded bus service in Seattle. Part 1 covered the Seattle Transportation Benefit District (STBD) from 2014 to early 2020. Part 2 covered its successor, the Seattle Transit Measure (STM) from 2020 to present. This article looks to the future of the STM and its 2026 renewal.

In April 2027, the Seattle Transit Measure (STM), Seattle’s 0.15% sales tax that funds extra bus service and other transportation priorities, will expire. Seattle (or King County) will need to place a measure on the ballot this fall for voters to approve to maintain or expand existing transit service.

County or City Measure?

Despite putting the breaks on its electrification plans, King County Metro is still facing a structural budget deficit starting in the early 2030s. Without additional funding, maintaining service will not be possible.

To avert that cliff and expand bus service countywide, transit advocates have urged King County Executive Girmay Zahilay to propose a funding measure to voters (sounds a lot like 2014 and 2020). Zahilay was supportive of this on the campaign trail. However, he said funds generated should also go to maintain and upgrade county roads similar to the failed 2007 ‘Roads and Transit’ measure activists campaigned against and a very similar countywide measure that failed in 2014 that directly led to the creation of Seattle’s Transportation Benefit District (now the STM). We reached out to Executive Zahilay and his office declined to comment.

Continue reading “Seattle Transit Measure: Renewal and a Course for More Frequent Transit” | 10 comments

Reminder: late-night Link service reductions in North Seattle are ongoing for construction of Pinehurst Station and Sound Transit’s Monthly Maintenance program.

Transportation:

• The eastside stretch of the 2 Line continues to struggle with power issues (The Seattle Times, $). Some agencies are asking the state legislature to solve it, but no dice this year (The Seattle Times, $)
• Last week, Sound Transit officially broke ground on the Stride S3 Line, a BRT route connecting Bothell to Shoreline via SR-522 (The Urbanist). Sound Transit summarized the history of transportation on the north end of Lake Washington (The Platform)
• Meanwhile, WA state legislators are planning to issue $2B in bonds to spend tomorrow’s gas taxes on the backlog of highway maintenance today (The Urbanist).
• A beer celebrating 75 years of the Washington State Ferry system is now for sale exclusively in WSF galleys (The Seattle Times, $). Advertisements say the limited brew is “from farms to ferries”.
• King County Metro is seeking a contactor for two bundles of major facility and infrastructure maintenance contracts, including upgrades and maintenance of trolley infrastructure (Metro Matters)
• On March 15, Kitsap Transit’s spring service change will bring updates to many routes and convert all routes on Bainbridge Island to three digit route numbers (KT Headways)
• A new peanut-style roundabout under I-405 on NE 85th Street will open this spring, built as part of a major interchange rework for the Stride S2 Line (WSDOT Blog).
• Community Transit shared some project updates with Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) during a roundtable meeting in February (Everett Herald)

Continue reading “Midweek Roundup: from farms to ferries” | 132 comments

For most transit agencies in the United States the largest constraint to providing more service is funding. In Seattle, that luckily has not been a constraint in recent years. Instead, our transit agencies have struggled to operate the amount of service voters have funded.

Before the pandemic, King County Metro could not deliver the amount of service Seattle wanted to purchase via the STBD. Labor shortages and limited bus base capacity meant money dedicated for service had to be diverted to capital projects and other programs.

In 2020, hundreds of millions of dollars of lost sales tax and fare revenue forced Metro to significantly downsize to stay above water by cutting service and reducing its workforce. Additionally, the City of Seattle reduced funding for night, evening, and weekend bus service and the fall 2020 service change was done under the assumption that Seattle’s Transportation Benefit District funding would lapse (which it did for four months). Coupled with very high turnover, mechanics, parts, and operators were all in short supply for years.

Continue reading “Metro Operator Shortage to End Next Year” | 55 comments

It has been over a year since Metro restructured the buses because of the Lynnwood Link Extension. We now know not only the monthly ridership of the routes but also more advanced data like the ridership per service hour from 2024 and 2025 . This is an analysis of those changes as well as a proposal based on that analysis. We will report on Community Transit routes as that data becomes available.

Continue reading “Lynnwood Link Metro Bus Restructure Analysis” | 84 comments

Two videos partly related to Friday’s “Pedestrianize the Ave” article.

The biggest opposition to congestion pricing and pedestrianizing streets comes before they’re implemented, then they open and often become big successes. The Hill of Hysteria. (CityNerd)

Deliveries by cargo bike. With illustrations in color. (Urban Mobility Explained)

This is an open thread.

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Sound Transit’s monthly maintenance program is continuing in March with several service reductions over the next few weeks.

Reduced Frequency

Starting at 11pm tonight, 1 Line trains will run every 20 minutes. The reduced frequency is to allow single-tracking trains between Rainier Beach station and Tukwila International Blvd Station. The 1 Line will resume its normal headways at 5am Sunday morning.

Pinehurst Station Construction

To accommodate Pinehurst station’s ongoing construction, 1 Line and 2 Line service will be altered after 11pm Monday-Friday next week. On Monday (3/2) and Friday (3/6), 1 Line trains will single track between Northgate and Shoreline South. 2 Line trains will terminate at Northgate station. After 11pm on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday next week, replacement buses will be used between Northgate and Lynnwood. The 1 Line will continue to operate between Federal Way and Northgate. The 2 Line will run between Downtown Redmond and South Bellevue, and between International District/ Chinatown and Northgate.

Continue reading “Upcoming Link Maintenance: March 2026” | 65 comments

University Way NE (“The Ave”) is the historic main street near the University of Washington campus in Seattle. The street is lined with dozens of shops, restaurants, and bars that cater to thousands of UW students and the nearby community. In 2021, the U District Link station opened one block west of The Ave between 43rd St and 45th St. Despite the street constantly buzzing with people shopping and dining, most of the right-of-way is allocated for cars and on-street parking.

University Way runs between NE Pacific St and NE Ravenna Blvd. For the purposes of this article, we will focus on pedestrianizing The Ave between NE 41st St and NE 50th St. There are a few variables that need to be considered when pedestrianizing a street: transit, emergency vehicle access, deliveries, accessibility, and cross streets. Let’s take a look at possible solutions for each of these categories.

Continue reading “Friday Roundtable: Pedestrianize The Ave” | 99 comments

This is part two of a three-part series investigating city-funded bus service in Seattle. Part 1 covered the Seattle Transportation Benefit District (STBD) from 2014 to early 2020. This article covers its successor, named the Seattle Transit Measure (STM) from 2020 to present day.

By early 2020, the STBD had transformed Seattle into a truly transit-accessible city. With Sound Transit’s self-proclaimed ‘exciting period’ of annual light rail expansions approaching quickly, county leaders saw an opportunity to undo the failures of 2014 and provide better bus service to all of King County, not just Seattle.

King County Floats Measure, Pandemic Hits

In February 2020, King County Council unveiled a proposal to utilize King County’s own Transportation Benefit District to levy a countywide 0.2% sales tax increase to fund additional transit.

Unlike the failed 2014 measure, revenues would go exclusively to Metro and focus primarily on service expansion. Seattle’s existing investments would also be funded under the assumption that a county measure would eclipse Seattle’s. Seattle would lose its freedom to dictate service investments, but planning and funding would be re-regionalized, ending years of a ‘pay to play’ system where Seattle experienced higher service levels than Metro could provide on its own.

Unfortunately on February 29, 2020, the first death from COVID-19 in the United States was announced in Washington. Soon after, then-Governor Jay Inslee announced a statewide state of emergency. By March 13, all schools statewide were ordered closed and Metro reported a 45% reduction in ridership.

All signs indicated that a county-wide transit measure was poorly timed and by March 16, County Councilmember Claudia Balducci announced that King County would no longer proceed with a ballot measure to increase bus service.

Continue reading “Seattle Transit Measure: Performance Since Passed (2020 to Now)” | 34 comments

In 2015, Mayor Ed Murray’s administration unveiled what would become the 2015 Levy to Move Seattle. It included a goal to “Provide 72% of Seattle residents with 10-minute all-day transit service within a 10-minute walk of their homes” by 2025 dubbed the “Very Frequent Transit Network”. Using Seattle Transportation Benefit District (STBD) funding, access to that network increased significantly. In 2015, only 25% of Seattle was within walking distance of the Very Frequent Transit Network. By 2020, 70% of the city was.

Continue reading “What Happened to the Very Frequent Transit Network?” | 21 comments

New post on Page 2: Renton’s Transit Center Moves Toward I-405. If you’re a reader and interested in lending your perspective on transit and land use in the region, contact us.

• WSDOT has taken another step toward revamping access to I-90 from Rainier Ave South, with the project team recommending “Alternative 2” for preliminary design (WSDOT Blog).
• Issaquah city leaders have some ideas how to build the 4 Line faster and cheaper (The Urbanist)
• The freeway bill comes due: WA State Senate wants to issue $2 billion in bonds to fund highway and bridge maintenance after years of raising regressive taxes to fund major freeway expansions (The Urbanist). The House’s proposed budget is more conservative. Transit and ferries get the short straw. Additional coverage from The Seattle Times ($).
• King County is set to finally adopt a revamped bus network around the Federal Way Link Extension including a 72% boost to weekend bus service (The Urbanist). Additional updates direct from Metro (Metro Matters).
• Sound Transit wants transit riders to consider it the backbone of a synchronized, regional system (The Platform). The spine, if you will.
• Washington State Ferries will start charging a 3% credit card fee on March 1 (The Seattle Times, $)
• Seattle’s Social Housing Developer is boosting staffing and looking to start buying property after first-year tax revenues were confirmed at $115M (The Urbanist).
• A discussion of the problems that arise when buses are free but subway trains are not (Pedestrian Observations)
• Washington is about to become the first state in the nation to have a comprehensive inventory of all of the sidewalks and pedestrian paths within its borders (Streetsblog USA)
• One-way streets help funnel commuters in and out of congested downtowns, but at the cost of killing pedestrians, street-level businesses, and the environment (Jalopnik).

This is an Open Thread.

55 comments