To avoid implementing a cuts policy that would damage some of Metro’s most productive routes, the Regional Transit Task Force produced a report suggesting how Metro’s service allocation policy should change. That report has become a bill that is now about to be voted on by the Regional Transit Committee, an agglomeration of three county council members (with two votes each), two nominees of the Seattle City Council (one vote each), and eight municipal officers (1/2 vote each) Â nominated by the Suburban Cities Association. See Section 270.20 of the County Charter.
You can read the final text of the bill or the (always helpful) staff notes. The bill includes several RTC amendments to provide some extra oversight, frequent review and re-approval of plan objectives, and codify the need for public outreach for plans that cut 10% or more of Metro service. There are also some minor tweaks to formulas.
My sources tell me this vote is likely to be unanimous. The way the RTC works, the County Council can either accept the unamended output of the RTC with a simple majority, or approve an amended version with six votes out of nine (Section 270.30).
The meeting begins at 3pm this afternoon, and I’m told it will be streamed here.
That’s a bit of a bizarre apportionment of power. Kents half a vote is/could be offset by a council person with 4x the votes.
I can see where coalition building is really really important in the group.
The Cities of Redmond, Kirkland, Bellevue and Issaquah (added)
sent a letter to the RTC expressing support for the plan with the condition that when the budget is able to support adding back service that routes be developed to serve the eastside that are consistent with the new productivity metrics. Sort of a Son of 40/40/20 but less arbitrary. The coalition of these four eastside cities would equal the voting block of the members selected by the Seattle City Council. Sorry, I don’t have a link to the final draft.
I thought the whole point of the policy was that the routes are added in logical ways. The letter from Bellevue, Kirkland, and Redmond pretty much explicitly asks the RTC to change its methodology to give Eastside routes more weight.
Yeah, I can’t quite make up my mind whether the primary intent of this letter is (a) generally griping about the current plan (b) redundantly supporting the plan in a cranky way or (c) special pleading for the Eastside. The only material issue I can parse out is that they’re unhappy with the way ST routes are considered with respect to Metro’s service allocations.
How do you access live streaming at the link provided? I can only find archived videos…
There a write-up in the PI here about how the RTC passed the measure unamimously. Surprised that the new formulas only shift “1 percent” of transit service into Seattle.
“Transit geeks everywhere should celebrate” – Reagan Dunn
And there was much rejoicing.. Yaaaaay…