Metro GM Desmond is doing a press briefing today, describing what Metro riders will face if the legislature doesn’t come through with addition taxing authority for King County:
“Our analysis shows that we should be adding service to meet growing demand, but the sad reality is that – without ongoing and sufficient funding – potentially one-third of our routes are on the chopping block, and another 40 percent of our routes face reductions and revisions,” said Metro Transit General Manager Kevin Desmond. “The result would be even more crowded buses, riders left at the curb, or people climbing back into their cars – something that would worsen the region’s traffic congestion and hurt the economic engine of the state.”
Metro’s report details the performance of the transit system’s 217 routes and shows at-risk routes.
Routes at risk for deletion (65 routes): 7EX, 19, 21EX, 22, 25, 27, 30, 37, 48NEX, 57, 61, 76, 77EX, 82, 83, 84, 99, 110, 113, 114, 118EX, 119, 119EX, 123EX, 139, 152, 154, 157, 159, 161, 173, 179, 190, 192, 197, 200, 201, 203, 205EX, 210, 211EX, 213, 215, 216, 237, 243, 244EX, 250, 257, 260, 265, 268, 277, 280, 304, 308, 601EX, 907DART, 910DART, 913DART, 914DART, 919DART, 927DART, 930DART and 935DART.
Routes at risk for reductions and revisions (86 routes): 1, 2S, 2N, 3S, 3N, 4S, 4N, 5, 5EX, 7, 8, 9EX, 10, 11, 12, 14S, 16, 21, 24, 26, 26EX, 28, 28EX, 29, 31, 36, 41, 43, 47, 48N, 60, 65, 66EX, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73, 106, 107, 116EX, 118, 121, 122, 125, 148, 156, 177, 181, 182, 186, 187, 193EX, 202, 204, 209, 214, 221, 224, 226, 232, 234, 235, 236, 238, 241, 245, 246, 248, 249, 255, 269, 271, 309EX, 311, 312EX, 331, 355EX, 372EX, 373EX, 901DART, 903DART, 908DART, 909DART and 931DART.
Routes potentially unchanged (66 routes): 13, 15EX, 17EX, 18EX, 32, 33**, 40, 44, 48S, 49, 50, 55**, 56**, 62, 64EX, 74EX, 75, 101, 102, 105, 111, 120, 124, 128, 131**, 132**, 140, 143EX, 150, 153, 155, 158, 164, 166, 167, 168, 169, 178, 180, 183, 212, 217, 218, 240, 242, 252, 301, 303EX, 306EX, 316, 330, 342, 345, 346, 347, 348, 358EX, A Line, B Line, C Line, D Line, 773, 775, 915DART, 916DART, 917DART (** Routes not reduced because we expect productivity to be above the bottom 25 percent threshold due to changes since spring 2012)
This list of routes shows the potential for cuts and revisions, however considerable additional analysis would follow during the coming year. As work continues, the public will receive additional information and opportunities to give input, both online and in face-to-face forums starting this fall.
Now, I’ll be the first to say that a few of those routes slated for a deletion are bottom-of-the-barrel routes that probably shouldn’t exist (e.g. 7X, 25, 37), but it’s evident that these cuts would go beyond just cutting out fat and into bone (e.g. 21X, 57). What “reductions and revisions” we might see for the Seattle core routes isn’t yet clear.
You can follow the live-tweets here: https://twitter.com/kcmetrobus.
UPDATE: And here are some maps: http://metro.kingcounty.gov/am/future/
Spring 2012 Route Performance Report
Interesting data from immediately before the restructure. Some things have changed since the 2010 Route Performance Report, and Metro has dispensed with the arbitrary division between “Serves Seattle Core” and “Does Not Serve Seattle Core.” The new way of presenting the data is not always as clear as the previous format, but makes painfully clear how overserved Mercer Island and much of the Eastside are in a time when other service is desperately overcrowded and in need of improvement.
The elimination looks sensible (though painful), but I wish they would separate out the “reductions and revisions” section, because that’s really not very helpful. An alignment change is very different than a frequency reduction.
I remain confused about the metrics used for considering reductions. For example, from the 2012 Service Guidelines Report, in what world does the 2S score a D in peak productivity? And how could the 2S have a “high” potential for major reduction but the 201 only a “medium” potential for major reduction?
In a world where one of the two productivity measures underlying these reports is passenger miles per platform hour. The huge majority of peak 2S trips are between First Hill and downtown, a distance of about half a mile.
The use of any metric involving passenger miles, rather than passenger boardings or average loads, puts a thumb on the scale in favor of suburban service. Metro has taken many such thumbs off the scale in the last few years (including in this report) but that one is still there.
The fact that the peak 2s is very expensive to operate because it spends half of its running time going three blocks on Spring doesn’t exactly help.
What always baffles me is why people even bother.
For a while in January I was walking from my downtown office to Seattle University almost every weeknight. I would typically see a 2 turn left onto Spring as I left, and every time I would be well ahead of it by the time I crossed I-5 on Seneca. If I stayed on Seneca, the same bus would pass me again someplace around Summit or Minor — after almost everyone had gotten off.
The fight over the 2 restructure was before you moved back to town, correct?
The 2 was going to be moved to the relatively traffic-predictable Marion and Madison, and staggered/live-looped with the 12. The result was to be a near-constant stream of buses shooting up and over First Hill, and then splitting after crossing 12th.
A very small number of boisterous nincompoops single-handedly imploded this improvement and the rest of the First Hill/C.D. restructure with it, simply because they couldn’t fathom not having a one-seat ride to Seattle Center or front-door service to “the retail core”, having to use a different entrance to the Virginia Mason complex than the one they were used to, or walking two extremely short blocks to Town Hall.
Said nincompoops kept insisting that the 2S as presently routed was “highly productive”. Guess they were “D” students. This is what happens when your political process is designed to cowtow to idiots.
No, I had just made it back when that fight happened. Of course I’m a supporter of moving the service to Madison. But that doesn’t change the fact that the existing 2S is more heavily used than you would think by looking at Metro’s numbers, which have a passenger-mile component.
There is a a problem with the 2s and 2n designations on p A-6 of the appendix. and the number #2 has historically had high ridership from MLK, especially 23rd Avenue to downtown. I think that there is something wrong here.
There is no problem on p. A-6 of the appendix. That is only referring to routes that had serious reliability problems (meeting a certain threshold) in 2011. The 2 as a whole had enough problems to meet the threshold only on Saturday. They didn’t break routes down into N and S for that table.
The 2 is fucked. Good job, Joanna.
I mean that on P. A-6, the designations for 2s and 2s as well as the 3n and 3s are reversed. QA is not 2s and 3s. In this case, all I ask is for the stats to be correct.
http://metro.kingcounty.gov/planning/pdf/2011-21/2012/MetroTransit_2012_Service_Guidelines_Report_032813.pdf
Sorry, joanna. I was looking at a different document. There is an error there, but looking at the numbers, it’s clear they switched the route descriptions, not the route numbers. The numbers in the 2N and 2S rows closely match those in the corresponding rows of the 2010 Route Performance Report.
I don’t seem to have a copy. Where do I find the the 2010 report now? In any case, I am trying to tell how Metro is rating the bus routes. They say one or both measures. Is it rides per platform mile or just miles per rider. Let use the 2s as defined as 2s in A-6, it is in the top 25% for riders per hour during peak service and apparently in bottom 25% for passenger miles and apparently performing at expectations at all other times. I am not sure how that makes it a D, since it also is in the top 25% by one of the measures during peak service and could be given a B. By the way it is only .1 point shy of being fine even in the miles measure. The 11 route also seems to be in a similar situation, only with a more extreme difference, and there the pattern repeats itself during off-peak and night time rides. It could have been given a B where it received D’s. Where is the rating for those that are at the top by one measure and at the bottom by another. It seems ridership would be just as important economically in terms of fare recovery analysis. I pay the same for a short ride as I do for a longer ride. (I know many have passes.) Since I know the route, I will say that many ride it from Madrona and in between to Broadway and to places along Seneca to work etc on First Hill and to downtown while gaining passengers along the way. But, then it is uses throughout the day and evening. I know that the 2010 analysis had it as top 25 in terms of use between 23rd and Pine.
I think this is more likely to be the case with routes that serve as a connection for different destinations and purposes. If it is primarily a commuter route to one destination then the peak hour passenger mile will give a good snapshot of the productivity. However, on the routes traveling from neighborhoods and densely populated areas the miles traveled may not be as many. Buses do have to turn around and have waiting areas at the end of each line and sometimes that will create an extra 1/2 to mile with lower ridership. I am feeling that this analysis was done too hastily and now they have people like me upset with Metro rather than lobbying for Metro’s interests in Olympia.
Again in terms of fare recovery (of course many have a pass) each rider has to pay or use a pass so it seems like the number of passengers per hour would be as fruitful as the distance. Both are interesting to look at, but why would they give the priority to the miles rather than the ridership when grading a route. It otherwise, does quite well during off-peak and night use.
And it would all be moot with a switch to Madison, as the resulting route would move so much faster that it would no longer have a problem with passenger-miles during peak.
Seriously, for someone who defends the existing 2S so vociferously, I feel like you must never ride it. It just flat doesn’t work, and the horrible peak passenger-miles number (as you point out, despite a good passengers-per-hour number) is showing you exactly why.
As we’ve seen in Pierce County, to give just the closest example, once you start making any service cuts at all you enter a downward spiral from which it is difficult if not impossible to escape. Rather than the promise of more and better service, voters instead see maybe the preservation of so-so service and that’s in the best case. Other voters get cut off entirely from transit and then decide that there’s nothing in it for themselves so why bother to vote yes on a funding package. That’s why any and all service cuts must be fought if people wish to prevent Metro from collapsing.
True, but Metro is still better off than PT. Metro’s staff is smart, and thinks about how to effectively cut. Pierce Transit staff skips the middle step, and just cuts. Metro has a strategic plan for public transportation (and it’s even called that), while PT doesn’t really seem to have a plan.
Metro cuts with scissors, PT cuts with a chainsaw.
I’m not sure the best administration could make great transit happen in Pierce County. King County has more favorable land use and more wealth; that means more electoral support and more funding.
Snohomish County might be a somewhat better comparison. I think Community Transit does a great job of outreach and communication, and comes up with innovative ideas to make the most of its resources. But at the end of the day they ended up cutting all their Sunday service.
The only sort of service cuts which can avoid the downward spiral are mass reorgs, such as switching an entire system from hub-and-spoke to grid, dissolving a countywide agency in favor of a citywide agency, etc. Those at least have the potential for improved service for a large class of people, even while service is worsened for others.
Anything which simply cuts, rather than reorganizing — and reorganizing is often not possible, especially if the existing system is pretty good — will start the downward spiral.
I would say the 30 is under very heavy risk of deletion.
The only thing that’s saved it so far is that it provides coverage service to the area directly north of campus and south of Ravenna Park, which is otherwise pretty cut off. Figure out another way to provide that service (not a particularly easy problem) and the 30 is a goner. Every other part of it is redundant with the 68/372, 65, or 75.
Ha, my bad. It was an attempt at a joke. I thought it had been deleted already. I didn’t realize the UW-Sand point portion survived.
Even though the 30 is the closest bus route to my home, I say good riddance. Everywhere it goes, I can walk or bike in less time than it would take to wait for it.
We should have a rule that all capital expenditures for LINK are diverted into operating budget until those budgets balance and then work resumes once there is surplus.
Link is the most significant improvement in our generation and would make these cuts more tolerable, although there’s a 3-year gap until University Link and 8-year gap until North Link. (The gap will be 1-2 years smaller by the time these cuts take effect.)
Also, ST can’t give money to Metro, so your “operating budget” would really be more ST Express. That could theoretically add service on existing routes but I doubt ST would launch new routes, and it can’t really launch things that aren’t in its long-term plan. (That’s why it’s updating the long-term plan now, to reflect evolving needs.) But ST Express can’t really address the local needs in Seattle at all. At best it could launch a bus to prefigure University Link/North Link, but that’s like killing a cow to avoid starving through winter: in the spring you’ll have lost the ongoing ability to produce milk. If you’ll really die in winter you may have to, but in this case we’re not going to die, we’d just have to walk to work or get a bicycle or drive. So it’s better to keep both us and Link expansion alive until it’s finished.
One rational thing I can think of which KCM could do in the face of huge cuts would be to design the route reorg for University Link now. Running the new routes before U-link opens, with a “U-link shadow bus”, would be undesirable in many ways, but will at least start getting people used to the new travel patterns in advance. Usually people take a year or more to adjust. Some money could be saved.
I doubt the reorg would save any money with a Metro-operated “U-Link shadow bus.” Such a thing would either have to be a diversion of the current 71X/72X/73X to serve UWMC — which would be mutually exclusive with most of the reorg concepts we’ve seen — or an entirely new line partially duplicating them. Without freed-up hours from part of the current 71/72/73 service, the rest of the reorg won’t pencil out financially.
“U-Link Shadow Bus” ∼ 43. I assume that’s not what you mean :).
I always thought U Link wasn’t likely to have a major restructure associated with it because Husky Stadium is out of the way for any of the routes you’d want to truncate there (the routes have to be acceptable for both downtown and U District traffic). The bigger restructure will come with North Link (45th, 65th, Northgate).
So any shadow whose purpose is to take people from the NE and get them downtown probably skips the stadium and Cap Hill… for that you’re probably talking about adding peak-period express runs from campus parkway and truncating some routes from the NE there… given capacity and and bunching issues on all these routes it might be hard to get right.
University Link will probably cause ridership on the 71/72/73 to drop by half, which means they could cancel some runs and free up capacity in the DSTT. But they would still be needed for those going to the Ave, the northwest side of campus, or transferring to another bus.
“Also, ST can’t give money to Metro,…” ????
Don’t they cut checks to each other all the time for services rendered?
Part of Metro’s problem with I-90 service is the maxing out of the number of 550 runs during peak of peak. The Mercer Island service would be much cheaper for Metro if it simply connected to the 550, and that would establish the East Link service pattern.
I wish this was the April Fool’s post.
+1.
It is. The legislature will cave in to all the doom and gloom, then the voters will overwhelmingly approve higher taxes to keep Metro afloat. This is just how things work around here.
Full speed ahead on building more subways with all the cash pouring in.
Just like Pierce and Snohomish counties.
Right?
The money is in different buckets. Metro’s crisis is artificial because it’s funding source is unstable. It’s not that people voted to reduce Metro or have stopped riding the bus or are too poor to fund for bus service. Ridership continues to improve. Metro’s problems have nothing to do with ST or vice-versa. It’s not true that the public can only afford Metro or ST, not both. And if you want to save money and cut government spending, we have plenty of ideas for how to do that, starting with not approving highway expansions.
Also, it’s not “full steam ahead on building more subways”. Only ST2 is authorized for construction. A study for ST3 has been started, but a study by itself is not going to create a subway and it’s not that much cash anyway.
A few things:
– First, it would be more credible for KCM to show the public how they are being good stewards of the people’s money *before* looking for more revenue. Take the 200, which is a free bus that circles Issaquah. The bus averages no more than 12 people off peak (< 8 peak!) — and given how often I see that bus empty, that might be on the high side. Why is metro running this route with a 40 passenger bus (or frankly, why is it running it at all?). And sadly, that bus is not the least used!
– Second, I think the one of the flaws in the Pierce county situation is that they scream the sky is going to fall, and then it doesn't — which erodes credibility. "Vote for this or all weekend services ceases, well — not really!" This press campaign where they plan to delete 1/4 of the routes and cut service on 1/3 of the routes because of a 17% shortfall doesn't make sense. Just be honest and explain what 17% actually is – I'm sure it is bad and there's no need to make it worse than it would be.
Jason
The 17% is relative to annual service hours. A route that runs 10 times per day uses significantly fewer service hours than one that runs 120 times in a day. However, many of those routes that have 120 trips per day are the most productive, so would not see cuts.
I believe that the City of Issaquah pays for the 200.
If it were a fully paid-for service, it wouldn’t be on this list.
Are you suggesting that routes not appearing on the list are fully paid for?
No.
I’m confused about your above statement then.
He’s saying that all fully paid services are absent from the list. Some services which are not fully paid may also be absent from the list.
Predicate logic is your friend. :-)
In my experience, the 200 is almost never empty, at least from downtown Issaquah to the Commons. Never more than half full, but certainly not empty. You want empty, ride the segment of the 214 that duplicates most of its southern segment.
I have to imagine the 200’s numbers are depressed by its northern segment, an odd milk run through Pickering Place, 51st St, and Fred Meyer. I’d like to see a large-scale rationalization of the Issaquah bus network, some of which seems to have grown piecemeal in recent years as the area has grown and the Highlands has been built. Luckily the truncation of the 214 will help with that, but the 200 could conceivably be replaced by making the downtown leg of the 271 all-day and running the 269 hourly all-day, and I wonder how hard it could be to add the Highlands to the 927’s service area.
Then again, the 200 is probably one of those routes that chases a goal beyond raw productivity; besides being free, it seems to cater to people who can’t walk very far, serving a nursing home on Front St, stopping closer to Costco than the routes staying on Sammamish Rd, and with its northern terminus right outside Fred Meyer’s front door. Selfishly, I’d like to keep the live-loop on 2nd and Front that goes right past my house, even though I can walk half a mile to downtown, but it also comes closer than any other route to serving Issaquah High School.
The 554 should really have a stop next to the Issaquah Commons. Every day, it goes right by there, almost empty. The number of people who would be delayed 30 seconds by this stop would be negligible.
It would be ruined by either iffy sidewalks on the southeast side of the Newport/Maple intersection, or a far more significant diversion that might end up following much the same route as the 200 anyway. I suppose you could put both stops on the northwest side, but…
Keep the 554 on its existing routing, but at one stop, right at the intersection of Maple and Newport. You cross the street right next to the bus stop and are right there in the shopping center.
Many of the routes slated to be totally cut don’t have many hours at all. By contrast, many of the routes slated to be left alone have the most hours. Assuming the most logical reductions for the routes in the middle category, this looks to me like a cut of 17% of hours.
we’ll refer to this post when Metro has to cut 17% hours and magically they find ways to not cut 25% of these routes. :)
Jason
@Jason: If Metro comes up with ways not to cut a lot of these routes it will likely be because political pressure forced them into a worse restructure, not because they had a better one sitting in their pocket the whole time.
I thought Bruce’s point was perfectly clear: if the cost of route 200 was fully paid by the city of Issaquah, then deleting the route would save zero dollars for Metro, so why on earth would they delete it?
running a bus system costs money and when funds dry up cuts have to be made. Metro has already trimmed around the edges and made those adjustments Jason speaks of. Routes 200 914 and 916 are free because of agreements with local jurisdictions which also ties metro’s hands with improvements other than just deleting them. So think of it this way: 17% is better that 53% of service lost.
If a route like the 43 is up for “revision” than this list is complete bonkers. The 43 is constantly floating between standing room only and every seat taken during a large chunk of the day…and even those 11:45pm trips are relatively busy. This is just a crazy scare tactic. I would gladly raise my taxes to fully fund Metro…but, I hate these sorts of threats.
I think the 43 makes the “revision” category because many segments of the route are redundant with the 8, 47, and 48S.
What AndrewN said.
The 43 will be restructured when CHS opens; it’s just a question of how. At that point there will be no part of it that isn’t redundant with the 47, 8N, or 48S.
Until then, there would be relatively painless savings available from re-shortening the nighttime inbound trips to Broadway that were extended all the way downtown a few years ago, and from reducing frequency at some points during the later morning hours.
I never thought I’d see a day when the 47 gets a new life as the main route to southwest Capitol Hill. It has been a poor has-been for so long that I expected it to eventually be deleted. But it could be seen as a “route that doesn’t overlap with Link”. Because those going to Bellevue or Summit Aves will continue to take the 47; those going to Broadway can take Link; those going to Boylston can walk from either one; and those going east of Broadway don’t take the 47 anyway.
One of the many restructuring ideas floating around in my head is to try to increase the unique value of the 47 for Capitol Hill. It will have to take a bigger role for inner Capitol Hill once Link opens. So make the most of that by using it to serve underserved downtown areas as well. I’d send it down 1st Avenue to Pioneer Square, turning back on Jackson Street, and restoring some of the local service that has been a big hole in the system since the 15 and its cohorts moved to 3rd some years ago.
I’ve toyed with sending the 47 down Lakeview and absorbing part of the 25’s route since it was the 14n. Of course, the 25 isn’t exactly what you want to inherit your route from…
It’s a tempting idea, but I think in the end the ridership numbers just aren’t there. There are relatively few people at the bottom of the cliff, and those near the top have an easy walk to the 49.
I had the same instinct about coupling the 47 and 25, but that’s kind of a moot point now, isn’t it?
My current preference is to electrify the 8 and hook it to the 47 instead of sending it down the reliability-killer that is Denny Way.
It does seem to be a bit of a shame to force the growing SLU–Capitol Hill ridership to transfer downtown, but at least there will be a train there in a few years. There’s plenty of inbound capacity on the 26, 28, and 40 during the evening rush.
Eliminating the 21EX is outright insanity—those buses going back to West Seattle at 5pm have, in many cases, people backed into the back door stairwell. In the morning rush hours, the passenger loads have become increasingly standing room only upon arriving in downtown. The elimination of the express would create the potential for crush loaded 21 locals during peak periods.
But I hope this is eventually nothing more than a scare tactic.
If you cut 17%, some routes will, of necessity, have crush loads and be passing up passengers. That’s life, and why 17% cuts need to be avoided.
There is currently a lot of spare capacity on 21 locals during peak, so it’s no wonder Metro is looking at the 21X.
A lot of working commuters don’t have the spare time to d*ck around multiple west seattle stops and SODO. The 21X is much neeeded for timely arrival to work for many commuters.
The same could be said of a lot of other routes on the list. That’s the nature of 17% cuts.
These cuts would force a majority of SR 520 commuters and a significant minority of I-90 commuters to transfer. They would almost certainly result in terminal overcrowding on First Hill service. They would eliminate service entirely from some places that actually use it quite a lot. There is no way to cut one-sixth of the system without pain to a whole lot of riders.
The 21X eliminates the deadly Lander street RR Xing.
That damn trap springs with capricious abandon.
How is this a scare tactic? Metro really will have a huge funding cut in 2014 if the congestion reduction charge is not renewed or if some other funding source isn’t found.
KC Metro sales tax revenue got a haircut in 2009 to be sure. But revenues have rebounded nicely. Fare recovery ratio has increased from ~18% to near 25%. Metro keeps telling us how it’s soooo much more efficient. Projections for 2014 are for sales tax revenue to higher than it ever was. Yet they’re saying they need to make a 17% cut in service? Doesn’t add up.
You’re completely ignoring a few things:
1) um… the expiration of the CRC
2) the population is no longer at 2006/2007 levels
3) fuel is much, much higher
4) service is slower and takes longer than in 2009, thanks to more congestion and higher ridership
No, the CRC was a temporary tax (yeah, right) that was put in place to bridge a short term drop in sales tax revenues. The increased ridership is driven by and large by 520 and viaduct service. The State I believe has an obligation to renew that funding until the construction is finished. But through efficiency, increased fare collection and ST adding service Metro should be sitting pretty in 2014. Sales tax revenue is projected to increase by more than 5% annually. The CPI for transportation is incraseing by less than 3%. Sounds like a lot of lame excuses for more money so they can return to the same old wasteful ways.
5) The subsidy for additional West Seattle service due to BDT construction is going away, even though construction is far from done. At least Gov. Gregoire is gone.
It’s definitely a scare tactic for the legislature. Because they will just look the other way and let transit bear the burden because they really don’t care, and think metro could really pull off this cut without anyone really noticing, this will wake them up and make them think. This might also cause others in the county to call the legislatures and ask them to do something.
What’s missing is that some of the routes on the reduction/revision list are due for a reorganization anyway in the next decade, particularly Capitol Hill (10/11/43/47/49) and the U District (66/67/70/71/72/73). I could also the Queen Anne/Central District restructure being resurrected (1/2/3/4). Last year the big brou-ha-ha was hundreds of people supporting Metro believing that if the $20 fee passed, their routes would remain completely unchanged. But Metro has to keep reorganizing for Link openings and performance metrics, and that certainly means that the 43/49/71/72/73 will be reorganized anyway, and possibly the 10/11/47/66/67 too. The Queen Anne/CD situation is different because Metro has telegraphed it’s unlikely to reorganize them absent a reduction. But then, is Metro de facto promising not to make any reductions on the 2N/4S/61 if replacement funding is found? And even if Metro is not promising that, will people interpret it as if it is?
In south King County it looks like almost all the reductions are in peak-express routes and on the periphery (Maple Valley – Enumclaw), rather than the all-day network. Whereas Seattle’s all-day network is much more heavily affected. This could mean two things: (1) consolidating Seattle service on fewer frequent corridors, or (2) lowering Seattle routes to roughly match south King County’s, with maximum 30-minutes midday and 30-60 minutes evenings, except for a very few frequent routes (7).
Looking at Ballard or West Seattle, it seems that the all-day network on primary routes (D, 40, 44, 48, C, 50, 120, 128) would essentially be untouched. With these two locations, it seems like consolidation is the primary action that would be taken. Capitol Hill/CD seem to have a greater number of revisions or reductions, leading me to think that there would be some level of reorganization to deal with routes that operate on close parallel corridors.
I frankly would not mind seeing the 19 deleted, so that the Viewmont whiners will have to experience the zig-zagging they’ve selfishly forced upon others. Perhaps next time they’ll go to bat for a usable restructure.
There are more than a few places on the linked maps where a better network is likely to result from the aftermath of the cuts.
In what alternate universe are West Viewmont all-day riders not zigzagging? They’ve been zig-zagging since all-day 19 service was removed.
Fun to see the 24’s epic unreliability quantified too.
There are no West Viewmont all-day riders. As in, zero. Ridership along that tail is entirely peak, and thus on the 19.
That’s what makes the zig-zag’s preservation so obscene. Those who protested to keep it never actually use it. But their hissy fit robbed Magnolia Village of a reasonable all-day connection to anywhere.
If the Viewmonters are forced to suffer the zig-zag the one time of day they use the bus, you’ll see a total Magnolia restructur (one that would retain the 19 peak) quickly reappear on the table.
Biggest surprises on the lists:
– Deletion of the 27. This is a capacity issue, if nothing else, especially since they are indicating reductions to the 3S/4S and the 14. Prepare for even more sardine cramming to and from the CD.
– Deletion of the 216. This is a high-ridership (and growing) commuter route, serving a fast-growing area.
– Reduction of the 3S (especially) and 4S. How many more people are supposed to cram onto 40′ trolley coaches? This is not a case where there’s excess capacity.
– Reduction/revision to the 11. This is a top-performing route which the linked reports describe as needing extra frequency and investment, not reductions.
– Reduction/revision to the 66/67/68/70/71/72/73. Again, not a lot of extra capacity here. This makes me think they would implement the “80” restructuring, which would totally reshuffle the NE network, as part of the reductions. This would be good for people along Roosevelt but could badly affect people elsewhere in NE Seattle, depending on how it was executed.
– The breadth of changes contemplated to the Eastside all-day network and to peak overservice on secondary SR 520 routes. It’s about time!
– No change to the 50. This is an important route for building a future network, but, let’s face it, ridership sucks now at some times of day. It could absorb some reductions in the near term if we have to cut 17%. Everything else on the “no change” list is a better performer.
See what Bruce said about the 21X above.
What’s the thrust of the “80” restructure? The NE could really use some strong lines! Right now there’s a lot of “from here there are two different half-hourly routes to the U District whose schedules don’t really complement eachother”.
The 50 might be in “too new to measure” territory. It may also be unique in how much it will benefit from northward Link expansion, so I hope Metro manages to protect it for a while.
What I have heard of the “80” restructure is that it would involve creating a single core route (the “80”) running from downtown to the U-District via the current express route and then running up Roosevelt and 5th to Northgate along the current 66/67 route. This would run at 7.5 to 10 minute frequency full-time, with the 70 expanded to run full-time as well. It would replace the 66, 67, 68, and the downtown parts of the 71, 72, and 73. This would also allow for absorption of the southern part of the 68 into the 372 as well as consolidation of the 73 and 373.
Sounds like a winner to me. That and maybe some connectivity improvements for routes along LCW, ‘eh?
The 80 restructure seems like a huge win. We should do this regardless of whether the 17% cut takes effect or not.
I already often walk further to the half-hourly 66 than to the 71/72/73 anyway. Sometimes, I walk even further and use the 510/511/512 at I-5/45th St.
Following up on Nathaniel’s comment above, the 80 would be the “Link shadow route”. It would serve all the stations from Westlake to Northgate except Capitol Hill and UW, which would remain the 43’s job (unless it’s reorganized too). Then when North Link opens, the 80 would be truncated at U-District station, something like the current 67.
Of course, nobody would mistake the 43 for an express. But anybody who wants an express would be on Link or the 80 anyway. And those wanting an express from U-District to UW stations, or from Capitol Hill to U-District, will just have to wait. ;)
It isn’t real clear what is meant by “reductions and revisions” in the quote. If, for example, the 11 is moved over to Madison instead of Pine, but service frequency levels are maintained, that would be a “revision” but it wouldn’t necessarily be a “reduction”. Until the details of “reductions and revisions” are published there isn’t much basis for intelligent discussion.
Actually, I don’t think route 216 has all that high ridership, especially when compared to the other routes that serve the I-90 corridor. When it goes by, there are often seats and certainly plenty of room for standees. If it didn’t stop at Mercer Island P&R, as Metro has threatened, I’m not sure it would warrant an articulated bus.
Did Metro hike up its fares? I thought the peak hours in the afternoon is from 3-6PM. Within the last couple days, my fare on 26 after 6PM on weekdays was $2.50. I’ve emailed Metro/Orca but I have not heard anything yet. When I asked the bus driver for 26, he said that the peak hours changed but Metro’s website still says 3-6PM for afternoon peak.
I’ve googled ‘peak hour change king metro 2013’ and searched on Metro’s website.
Where did you board? From my understanding, peak fare is charged on any bus originating between 6-9am or between 3-6pm. So if you boarded a 26 northbound at 3rd/James at, say, 6:19pm, that bus originated as a 131 in Burien at 5:25pm, so the whole run would charge peak fare until it arrived at E Green Lake at 7:00pm
Anyone else able to confirm if that’s right?
True. Confusing, but true.
It appears to have been redefined to be “whatever Metro says it is”. A 255 leaving Brickyard P&R at 4:52 and terminating at ID Station at 6:08 is not charged Peak Fare. But a 255 leaving Kirkland TC at 6:35 getting to Brickyard P&R at 7:04 is. I think the asymmetric application of peak fare is a vestige of the old pay as you enter vs pay as you leave system.
Ah, this would also explain why I was charged off-peak pricing for some 3:15–3:30ish boardings the last time I was in town.
It’s 3-6pm from the perspective of the downtown end of the route.
Bellinghammer and Beavis are wrong; Mike is correct. An inbound route that arrives downtown at 6:01 is off-peak, as is an outbound route leaving at that time.
A later bus that dings you for the peak fare is either significantly late, or the driver has failed to log the “next trip” on the ORCA reader, so the reader is essentially still charging you for an earlier run. I’ve seen readers still showing “peak” at 7:30.
99% of drivers are gracious when you point their error, and will fix it before you swipe. The handful of drivers who are dicks about it should no longer have jobs.
If I’m delayed leaving downtown until close to 6pm – as I was last week due to a car colliding with an ambulance at 2nd and Pike – I manually change the DDU to off peak, non-zone fares. Unfortunately, we have no instruction or policy in place (or automated function) to support that.
The “next trip” changes only kick in when you pass a geographical time point, not a time of d
Drivers don’t have clear instruction on this issue, and the often rigid insistence of management that we adhere to written policy no matter what has a chilling effect on the willingness of some to be flexible.
With modern computer technology, why is the time the bus is scheduled to be in a particular location (downtown) even relevant for calculating the fare? Just have the card reader check what time it is and charge accordingly. It shouldn’t be this complicated.
+1
That’s what I said, Beavis. If you were scheduled to pass downtown at 5:59 you’re peak, even if you’re late.
But the “next trips”, which still seemingly must be updated manually, are not, then drivers often show “peak” one entire trip later than they should.
Like the RapidRide that passed through downtown at 6:50 tonight. That bus was not 50 minutes late. The driver was just negligent.
“With modern computer technology, why is the time the bus is scheduled to be in a particular location (downtown) even relevant for calculating the fare?”
Because the designation is per bus run, not per the moment you board. Otherwise you get into situations like the tails of the 358 or 120, where people would sometimes be overcharged or undercharged by almost an hour for trips that could/couldn’t plausably be a peak commute.
This is why Metro is seriously considering elimination of the “off-peak discount”. That, and that they’d generate a few million dollars more annually in fare revenue.
Speaking of which, I don’t think the 17% figure accounts for potential new fare revenue, nor the potential operational savings if Metro embraced the ORCA card and started incentivizing it on a per-ride basis. Still, fare revenue would have to go up by about 67% to save all the service that is on the chopping block.
Um, yeah. $2.25 is one of the highest bus fares in the entire western hemisphere. Especially for users of smartcards. Quite the discount.
How about this: charge a premium fare for premium service. If 90% of your routes are veritable nightmares to use at rush hour, then you have absolutely no business demanding $2.50 — more than a Metrocard fare on the New York Subway — for them.
Au contraire, d.p. On the peak express routes, nearly everyone gets a *seat*. Can you say that about the subway?
What I’m referring are the not peak expresses, the routes that add insult to injury by demanding an extra quarter to crawl at 3 mph while balancing in the stairwell of a trolleybus held together by duct tape.
The peak expresses are the ones that should be charging a premium.
I think Metro is pondering eliminating the zone system, too.
er, I think Metro is thinking of eliminating the “1-zone discount”.
” $2.25 is one of the highest bus fares in the entire western hemisphere.”
Um – no.
Find me a higher local bus fare, Beavis. Urban service, not a highway-express, and at the smartcard price (since nearly every other agency offers a price differential between cash and smartcard).
You won’t find one.
Metro: pay the most, get the least.
d.p., You are, unfortunately, wrong about most agencies having a different cash and smart card fare. Only four US bus agencies and two Canadian bus agencies do that. I don’t know if you are correct about the highest local fares, since I’ve only studied the agencies with smart cards in depth. Among that set of agencies, Metro’s local fare is close to the highest (at least in the US), and will be highest after the fare restructure.
But that doesn’t bother me as long as (1) a low-income ORCA is available; and (2) those who use loaded product get a per-ride rebate of at least some small amount. Getting rid of our legacy zone system would be the icing on the cake.
Are you sure about that? I can name three just off the top of my head: Boston, New York, and Chicago. A local bus in Boston is still only $1.50, and that’s after multiple fare hikes. New York will cost you $2.37 1/2 regardless of mode, but what you get for your extra 12.5 cents is incomparable. And that’s still cheaper than a molasses-slow Seatyle bus at rush hour.
“Off-peak discount” my ass, Beavis. We’re already approaching the point where people with paid-off cars, reasonable insurance rates, and short in-city commutes save money by driving themselves. Metro isn’t good enough to be asking one red cent more.
“Are you sure about that? I can name three just off the top of my head: Boston, New York, and Chicago.”
New York doesn’t have a contactless smart card systemwide yet. It’s in pilot program phase, on a limited number of routes.
The other two are DC and Ventura County (CA).
For the purposes of this discussion, stored-value MetroCard’s lower base fare + 5% value bonus both apply.
Are there any other pre-RFID stored-value systems still in use? If so, it wouldn’t be surprising if they also offered a discount over using cash, as MetroCard does.
“Boston, New York, and Chicago”
New York and Chicago (and San Francisco) have a dense area several times larger and denser than Seattle. (I don’t know enough about Boston to compare.) This allows them economies of scale and thus lower fares. It also helps enormously that they built subways decades ago which are paid off now. Seattle has to run buses to 145th just to have plausable basic service, whereas in those other cities “145th” would be as dense or denser than 85th.
That doesn’t give you licence to completely divorce cost and value.
You can’t just make endless excuses for charging people more and more, until the cost of riding transit is as much as they would pay for the marginal cost of driving themselves, despite the transit taking infinitely longer and being infinitely less pleasant.
At some point, you have to get to the core of poor structural and operating procedures and fix them. Only then can you even begin to approximate the economies of scale that you correctly describe as existing in Boston/NY/Chicago/SF.
That means not allowing people to take so long paying that they negate their own fare in driver hours. That means not preserving every detour and route quirk. That means occasionally telling vocal busybodies to go fuck themselves.
Our fare is already too high for what we get. You can not ask $3 for this kind of crap without expecting a mass abandonment of your service.
p.s. And those were just the notable cities that offer stored-value-card discounts, a best-practice that passenger volume has demanded.
You’ll find plenty of additional bus fares lower than ours. Some of them in even sprawlier environments.
How the heck is 197 both on the list for potential deletion and the bottom 25%? Every time I use that route, it’s full. There are people standing in the isle on that route. Contrast this to 193, which isn’t in danger of being eliminated, and isn’t in the bottom 25%. 193 is even more of an unnecessary convenience route than the 197. You could walk to first hill from Downtown Seattle, whereas you have to make another transfer to get to the U district.
But the 187 and 903 adjustments make sense. 903 could lose half-hour service on the weekends and go hourly, and maybe on non-peak on the weekdays as well. I am actually surprised that 187 is on the revision list, but it really doesn’t need to run as late as it does (last week day trip leaves the Federal Way TC at 11:14 pm, probably gets back around midnight).
I should note that I am well invested in 187 and 903, and ride one of those routes every day.
The 197 is an extremely long one-way route. So it spends a long time without any passengers at all, and then a long time with just one set of passengers. Thus it fares poorly on both of the metrics (passenger boardings per platform hour and passenger miles per platform mile) used by Metro for this evaluation.
And that makes sense. Routes like the 197 have the same fare as all the others but are considerably more expensive to run. It would be far cheaper for Metro if the 197 passengers transferred downtown, whereas the 193 is barely more expensive to run than a Federal Way-downtown express.
Even with all the passengers? That bus is always packed.
At that hour of the day almost every bus is “packed” at least to the level of having all seats full, and most of the ones that weren’t have already been cut.
I have an idea. Eliminate the 197, and have ST make the 586 stop at Federal Way TC. Maybe switch part of the 181 to every fifteen minutes to account for the loss of 179 and 197.
I have no idea why they don’t do this already. So many ST routes just drive by federal way without stopping.
Unfortunately the 586 also scores poorly in Sound Transit productivity reports. The current long-range plan has it being canceled once U-Link opens; people will take a 59x and transfer to Link.
But I 100% agree with your larger point and would argue that all 594 trips should stop at Federal Way. That would also free up the 578 to become a true Sounder shadow and improve Kent-Seattle service, which is currently slow off-peak and would go entirely missing on Metro with a good Valley restructure.
So what would it take to get ST to consider doing a “512” with the 594?
Add the Federal Way stop to the 594, and remove it from the 574. Airport riders headed to Federal Way do better taking the A Line.
And ask the agency to eliminate subarea equity.
”
Unfortunately the 586 also scores poorly in Sound Transit productivity reports. The current long-range plan has it being canceled once U-Link opens; people will take a 59x and transfer to Link.”
That’s all the more reason to combine the 586 with the 197 in the interim until U-Link opens.
Combining the 586 and the 197 is a magnificent idea! It ditches the low-productivity local tail of the 197, while improving headway for all riders involved. ST could pick up this extra cost for the next couple years until the 586 gets axed (if it gets axed).
If Metro simply dropped the 197 and ST didn’t rescue that group of riders, that would mean a few more 577s or 177s or 179s would get crammed into the Central Business District during peak, more 71-74s might be needed, and the slowdown would come with a service cost to all downtown routes.
Having the 586 serve Federal Way would improve headway for Tacomans heretofore stuck taking the 574.
Or, consider if Kent/Des Moines P&R were added as a stop on the 586, with signal priority added on these buses (or that stop becomes a serious time killer). There are still lots of routes that riders could take locally to get to KDM, and then transfer. The shortened headway and lack of need to ascend or descend two floors or cross an arterial should make this a not-too-unpleasant transfer point. Indeed, a lot of riders might choose it over Federal Way Hangout.
If the bottleneck at KDM can’t be solved, then add a stop at Star Lake, which only adds a couple minutes to travel time, and gets most South King County riders except those coming from Kent Station or Highline. Of course, it doesn’t help riders simply trying to get to Federal Way or other points along the 181. That rider group may be needed to get the productivity goals to pencil out. Keeping all three stops would be overkill, but ST might do it to minimize transfers and lost fare revenue.
Also, ST has different standards for standing time than Metro. If the 586 with the 574 stops added has lots of standing passengers, ST might be fine with that. UW Students might also be fine with it.
If we lose a Downtown and a U District bus, then we should have the 586 stop, and a Downtown Seattle bus that isn’t very busy.
How about the 586 and the 592? I can’t speak for business on the 592 at all (I have never ridden it), but it’s probably not terribly busy since it stops in DuPont (which probably isn’t very big on transit usage) and Lakewood (many people would prefer the sounder).
We could also add run “181x” trips to connect with these routes in both directions, the difference being that the routing between Auburn station and Federal Way TC is along SR18, exactly the same as 578, and skips stops by the supermall. This would also make up for the loss of a Seattle express bus for Auburn (although Auburn does have the Sounder).
I agree with the others who said that knowing what exactly the planned reductions/revisions are would be helpful. Some of the revisions that Metro walked back last time might turn out to be a good thing, making trips faster through revising routes to eliminate inefficiencies. Or, they could just be a reduction in service. But it’s hard to get all worked up about it and call my elected representatives when I don’t have strong enough talking points. I mean, making my case that my commute will be 10 minutes longer or I’ll have difficulty juggling my child care schedule because of fewer runs of my bus of choice, that’s a stronger argument to tell a legislator than just some vague “Cuts are bad mmmkay” generic message generated by an advocacy website.
Any plans for how we will counter the “but-it-you-don’t-like-it-you-can-always-drive” argument.
The old-fashioned way: If you cut my route, or any runs, or the out-of-the-way stop in front of my house, or if I don’t get a seat on every ride, or if my bus doesn’t keep serving downtown all the way to the Seattle Center and the baseball stadium, I’m going to threaten to go back to driving. See if I don’t.
Don’t forget having to wait 5 minutes while a bus changes drivers.
Diving further into the service guidelines report…
All the following routes were underserved given demand and network factors as of Spring 2012, and haven’t been fixed since (a few more have). So you can see that we shouldn’t be cutting service further! At the most, we should be redirecting some service from overserved routes to the below.
11
33
68
71 (65th Street portion)
125 (was not underserved in 2012, but is now)
132 (improved last fall, but still needs more)
140 (to be fixed by RR F)
153
155/156 (really? seems screwy)
166
183
345
373
… and this is why 17% cuts are bad.
And one more collection of factoids… routes that were seriously overloaded (any load factor average >140%) in 2012. These also warrant more service, not less.
9X (peak)
17X
44 (off-peak)
48N (peak)
48S (peak)
56 (peak)
65 (peak)
67 (peak)
68 (all day)
71X/72X/73X (all day)
74X
75 (peak)
125 (peak)
255 (peak)
347 (peak)
372 (peak)
373
Anecdotally I also have reason to believe that today the 120 would crack this list.
As a regular rider of the 132, I have to admit, the buses are rarely packed, except right after major events. People are just rude about moving to the back. Yeah, I’m talking about you in the red and black jacket last night. Wanna make something of it? Okay, thanks for letting me by after you ignored the recorded message for the third time. Punk.
I wish they had transit centers at the bus bases. That way, when a bus switches its sign to “south base” or whatever, they could provide express service to the south base transit center, where people could transfer to buses leaving the base to start their routes.
It increases service without increasing cost or hours. Win-win.
Except that when most buses are returning to the base, the system is full for the day, with few new routes leaving the base.
Nice thought, but wouldn’t work in operation. Most of the bases are in no-mans land.
Does Stadium Station count?
So, the 157, 159, and 161 are on the bubble, but the 158 is not to be touched? Anyone have any ideas how to improve that proposal? Anyone? Anyone?
Hey, that’s progress. Cutting more than two-thirds of those wasted trips is much better than leaving them all. And since under this plan they’re cutting the 192, KDM P&R will actually make more use of the 158 service.
Are they actually cutting trips, or just turning them all into 158s?
Also, the 166 already provides the connection between Kent Station and Highline. The 158 local portion is essentially duplicated by the 168.
158 riders already have their express option: Sounder. Other riders are threatened with losing their service altogether.
Can’t the “social equity” clause be invoked so that riders who will lose their service get saved before the second express option of other riders gets saved?
I can’t imagine they’d go through the trouble of telling people their one-seat rides would be canceled if they weren’t actually going to delete the trips. That would be politically stupid. It will be a rightsizing of service to demand, that is not quite as politically painful as deleting the service entirely.
The problem with the social justice parameter is that it doesn’t take type of service into account, only geographical coverage, and East Hill is already an area that scores quite “well” on that parameter.
Of course if it were up to me all of those hours would go toward making the 169, which desperately needs upgrades (although ridership has apparently declined a bit since 2010), frequent service. The 164 could use quite a bit more frequency as well.
I really don’t think the cut list presented here is the final plan.
First, there is a lot of time for Metro to better study how the routes are doing post-October-2012.
Second, yes, this is a scare format. There is lots of room to do smarter stuff and still reach 17%, not all of it involving routing. It will still be quite painful, but less painful than this list.
Saving the continuation of the 158 north of Kent Station while cutting other neighborhoods off entirely is, in my mind, a clear violation of the “social equity” clause. Just run the 166 and 168 at 20-minute peak-of-peak headway (matching what Sounder will be starting in October), and time the 168 to beat every northbound Sounder run, and pick up from every southbound Sounder run, and gobs of platform hours could be saved, along with providing significantly improved service into the Highline area.
I’m also frustrated that the 101, 102, 143, and 150 aren’t on the potential restructure list. There are gobs of hours to be saved getting rid of the duplicate-head on those routes. The reduced traffic in the DSTT, or reduced traffic on 3rd Ave if some routes get moved downstairs, could also produce significant platform-hour savings.
As far as I’m concerned, if Metro cuts neighborhoods off entirely before cutting all the duplicate-head, then they are violating the Guidelines.
This is an improved posting. Feel free to delete the one just before this one. I am trying to figure out how Metro is rating the bus routes. The definition seems to state by one or both measures. Is it rides per platform mile or just miles per rider? Let use the 2s as defined as 2s in A-6, it is in the top 25% for riders per hour during peak service and apparently in bottom 25% for passenger miles and apparently performing at expectations at all other times. I am not sure how that makes it a D, since it also is in the top 25% by one of the measures during peak service and could be given a B. By the way it is only .1 point shy of being fine even in the miles measure. The 11 route also seems to be in a similar situation, only with a more extreme difference, and there the pattern repeats itself during off-peak and night time rides. It could have been given a B where it received Ds. Where is the rating for those that are at the top by one measure and at the bottom by another? It seems ridership would be just as important economically in terms of fare recovery analysis. I pay the same for a short ride as I do for a longer ride. (I know many have passes.) Since I know the route, I will say that the 2 transports many from Madrona and in between to Broadway and to places along Seneca to work etc on First Hill and to downtown while gaining passengers along the way. But, then it is used throughout the day and evening. I know that the 2010 analysis had it as in the top level in terms of use between 23rd and Pine.
I think this is more likely to be the case with routes that serve as a connection for different destinations and purposes. If a route is primarily a commuter route to one destination then the peak hour passenger mile will give a good snapshot of the productivity. However, on the routes traveling from neighborhoods and densely populated areas to differing types of destinations the miles traveled may not be as many. Buses do have to turn around and have waiting areas at the end of each line and sometimes that will create an extra 1/2 to mile with lower ridership. I am feeling that this analysis was done too hastily and now they have people like me upset with Metro rather than lobbying for Metro’s interests in Olympia.
I am also wondering how Metro counts the passenger miles on the buses that are not used as split routes. I know quite a few people on the 2s who work in Belltown or at the Center. And, add the 13 to that mix. How are those passenger miles counted each day. Half and half does not tell the story. If they are still on the bus when it crosses some imaginary line then is their trip counted as a shorter trip for both the 2n and 2s. It is not used as 2 buses. Yes, I use the 2 daily, mostly in the 2s area where I live and often into 2n. How is the time from the bus barn divided between the 2 to 3 routes? David L. you show that in part of the report Metro stated the 11 needed more service hours based on the number of riders and yet with a lower passenger mile measure than the 2. And, then with the grading system it gets Ds all the way across. Moving the 2 to Madison west of 12th would have little impact on the numbers. As Seneca would not be served, but the people would still need to get to their various destinations with more possibly more transfers and more short rides. I really hope that answers to some of the funding issues are found. Even then the data need to be transparent with a solid foundation for analysis. The analysis of the presentation of the current data seems rushed with mistakes and inconsistencies.
Or walking two blocks from Madison to Seneca. No other part of the city has transit corridors spaced two blocks apart. It’s ridiculous and wasteful.
On the contrary, it would speed up service by a factor of 2 during peak hours. Faster service means fewer service hours needed to provide the service at a given level of frequency, and fewer coaches needing to drive the length of the route. So faster service improves all numbers measured in terms of either platform hour or passenger mile.
A 2S at rush hour typically takes 10-12 minutes to ascend the 8 blocks of Spring/Seneca to Boren. A 12 at rush hour typically takes about 5-6 minutes to ascend the 12 blocks of Madison to Boren. That is where the difference in the numbers between the 2 and the 12 comes from.
“Or walking two blocks from Madison to Seneca. No other part of the city has transit corridors spaced two blocks apart. It’s ridiculous and wasteful.”
“A 2S at rush hour typically takes 10-12 minutes to ascend the 8 blocks of Spring/Seneca to Boren. A 12 at rush hour typically takes about 5-6 minutes to ascend the 12 blocks of Madison to Boren. That is where the difference in the numbers between the 2 and the 12 comes from.”
Thanks, David, for a succint presentation of why the 2 should go away. “Social equity” means some have to walk a little farther so that others have a bus to walk to at all.
The #12 is a terrible bus for getting downtown or accessing the tunnel transportation. There are many issues associated with putting more transit on Madison, emergency vehicles are one. Improvements are already scheduled for the #2 along Spring. Metro avoids routing most buses so that almost a whole bus exits to transfer to another, in this case in the 2 turned around at the bottom of Madison, most to travel north. That type of transfer process is time consuming and very difficult for many passengers. Due to its path Madison is at different points within two blocks of many different routes.
Of course we’ve been through this a million times before, but your parade of transfer horrors is completely imaginary. The walk from Madison/3rd WB to 3rd/Spring NB where the northbound QA buses pick up is one flat block. The walk from 3rd/Marion SB (where southbound QA buses drop off) to Marion 3rd/EB is two crosswalks. These are not transfers that are difficult for anyone. And what we’d get in return is a corridor that actually works.
Incidentally, those improvements are planned for Madison, not Seneca. Madison BRT is the single corridor in the city’s TMP that has the most momentum.
joanna, what improvements are scheduled for Spring/Seneca? How are emergency vehicles impacted on Madison more than Seneca when Madison has more lanes, including two-way left turn lane (which allows for maneuverability)?
Oh, and to address your point on how the numbers are measured, a passenger riding from First Hill to Queen Anne on the 2 would be counted twice, once for each part of the route. The 2S and 2N are considered entirely separate routes (which are through-routed) for Metro’s internal systems. That passenger is accounted for in the same way that a passenger would be who caught a 124 in Georgetown, rode through downtown as the bus changed to the 24, and got off in Magnolia.
The numbers would be counted twice, perhaps. But how are the passenger miles handled? If they are divided up then that measure is not a reliable measure. There is still the issue of why the 2 and 11 received Ds where they could have received Bs. There is no financial gain to be had here, especially with the improvements already underway. I think you will see the problem solved.
Passenger miles are divided between the routes, but so are platform miles. That leads to the accurate result that the bulk of the passengers aren’t riding very far on the 2S (mostly Seneca/Terry to 3/Pike, a distance of less than half a mile) despite its longer length, and they are riding a lot farther on the 2N.
What’s the dividing line between the 2S and 2N routes? Third and Pike?
Most of what ails Madison from a transit perspective could be addressed by removing some parking and either adding left turn signals or eliminating left turns altogether (although left turns are more of an issue east of 12th). And I don’t understand how emergency vehicles are an issue at all – they have the ultimate in signal priority and are rarely in the way for long.
The dividing line is a downtown timepoint on the particular route… typically the closest one to 3rd and Pike.
For people who are just riding the 2 a few short blocks between First Hill and downtown, a reduction in service is not that big a deal because, if worst comes to worst, they can always walk. For people who have to travel 5 or 7 miles, rather than 1/2 mile, losing transit service is a much bigger deal.
This thread is making me think only half in jest of a restructuring proposal.
Do all the restructures we’ve heard about… Madison BRT, including moving the 2 over to Madison. Move the 3/4 to Yesler. And so forth. Make those corridors nice, high-volume, and fast.
Then start a short Dead-Ender Route that runs every hour during the day only. Use the adverse weather wire to go 3rd – Spring/Seneca – 9th – Jefferson – 21st/James. Put in a stop every block just for that route. Then maybe the rest of us can get our faster, more frequent service along simplified corridors.
David L. I do not believe that you have been on the #2 east of Terry. Have you boarded it at anytime of day at 23rd? Have you boarded it during morning peak hour. Usually, I catch an earlier bus, but I am always surprised how full it is by the time it arrives at 23rd or 21st headed into downtown. Also you state this as though the numbers indicate fewer passenger miles with high ridership all day when it it is only during the peak times. Show me the actual data. I am addressing the data that I have been shown while you are simply speculating. The data does not support what you are saying since the numbers are fine during off-peak and night times. There would be no gain whatsoever for Metro funding in making those changes.
“Passenger miles are divided between the routes, but so are platform miles. That leads to the accurate result that the bulk of the passengers aren’t riding very far on the 2S (mostly Seneca/Terry to 3/Pike, a distance of less than half a mile) despite its longer length, and they are riding a lot farther on the 2N.
We’ve all been on the 2, Joanna. We’ve used it to get to Boren, to Broadway, to 18th/21st/23rd, to Madrona. That’s why we’re all so baffled at your stubbornness.
Why would you want to wait for a bus that is consistently 5-10 minutes late coming before you even get on it downtown, and then takes 10-20 minutes to crawl less than a mile?
The Central District is not even 1.5 miles east of downtown. Why subject yourself to molasses transit when a reliable, consolidated corridor could get you home in minutes?
David L., I challenge you to give me the actual ridership numbers along the 2 route in both directions at all times of the day or let me know where they are. You see I requested this type of report from Metro more than a year ago and never saw it and now in the middle of a crisis it comes out. I am going on data that I have seen in the past. If we have the acutal numbers for the whole route at all time we can actually do more than speculate. Plus what is wrong with getting to First Hill from both directions? What is wrong with getting downtown to the tunnel? It would be like saying there is something wrong with the 2n due to the fact that a fair number of people used it to get from lower Queen Anne and the Center to downtown. There are also quite a few who enter that along third. I know that a good number of passengers around 5:00 PM exit the 2 headed downtown at 4th and Seneca to go into the tunnel. I know this due to the fact that I also exit there sometimes and am aware of when many others also cross 3rd Avenue to go into the tunnel. Once when I was already on Madison and was going to a meeting in SODO, I used the 12, and exited as near to a tunnel entrance as possible. Using the 12 added at least another 10 minutes, maybe 15 to my journey. All the red lights etc just to get to a tunnel entrance was frustrating. Your analysis relates only to some passengers. There are many who use it all day and night long. That is why it has a good record in all other categories. Remember the total ridership for the 12 is far fewer since it runs about every 30 minutes, which is also true for the 11. The total number of riders served is not reflected here. In terms of expense, it does not matter if the bus runs along Seneca or Madison, but it matters to riders. If SDOT makes the promised improvements, you reason for complaining will be gone.
The blocks of downtown south of University are extremely short. The two-block distance from Madison to the tunnel entrance at Seneca is almost precisely equivalent to a single-block walk from Pike to Pine. That’s how short those blocks are.
It did not take you 10-15 minutes to walk that distance.
At this point, we can only assume that you have no ability to measure time or that you are a liar.
Never mind the fact that the revised 2/12 plan would have ensured all buses on the corridor would run on time, and would have provided you the ability to take one route or the other every 7-10 minutes all day and night.
But you never got that through your head, did you?
joanna, you don’t need stop-by-stop ridership numbers to prove my point. Just think carefully about the numbers Metro has already given us for the 2S. In the peak, the route is a top performer on passengers per platform hour and at the same time a bottom performer on passenger miles per platform mile. Off peak, the pattern is exactly the same, just a bit less stark (the route barely edges out of the bottom 25% in passenger miles per platform mile). There’s only one thing that can possibly mean: a ton of passengers are using the bus for extremely short trips, yet the bus actually covers more miles than those short trips do. That’s exactly what I’m saying.
And, second, stop worrying about the ridership patterns and listen to the bigger point that I am trying to make (along with d.p. and everyone else): the extremely slow speed of the 2 makes it non-functional transit. You could save a ton of time by taking today’s 12 and walking, and that’s before Madison gets the dedicated bus lanes that are planned for it.
I have spent plenty of time on the 2 as both a driver and a passenger. Buses are full east of Boren only at peak hour in the peak direction. The rest of the time the service pattern is that the bus is crammed full between downtown and Terry and has a few people the rest of the way. Yes, there are plenty of riders who get on between Broadway and 23rd. But that is a short enough stretch that those riders do not fill buses off-peak, and there are far more riders who use the 2 to climb First Hill.
In case you think I’m picking on the 2, the same unbalanced ridership pattern applies to the 12 and the 3/4. But the 12 doesn’t suffer such heavy delays and isn’t so long past First Hill. And ridership on the 3/4 is so insanely high that James Street delays don’t even matter when calculating the numbers. (Also, there will eventually be a partial fix for the 3/4… moving it to Yesler.)
We do need it, and by the way the division points between the routes is a bit up in the air. Even the dates of which division points were used has to be researched. It is not readily available or noted in the reports. You may not want to check the data, but it is necessary to ask questions.
Fares are going up by another 25 cents early next year. Now we all get to pay $2.50-$2.75 to support Joanna’s pet inefficiency.
Congratulations, Joanna. Your thick-headedness harms us all.
Would Metro save a lot on running buses near the (Pierce) county line if they built another bus base in Federal Way or Auburn? Aside from making express routes like the 190s and the 170s more practical as far as costs, local buses in FW/Auburn/Enumclaw/Kent/Maple Valley/Northeast Tacoma wouldn’t need to be driven to and from Tukwila every time they need to go to a base.
When budgets are tight, Metro would cut those routes completely before spending millions to build a new base.
But Metro is smarter than that, which is more than I can say about Pierce Transit. Even through the cuts, Metro will still keep service in Enumclaw (only the Renton bus would be eliminated), which would be analogous to Pierce Transit preserving service in Buckley (They don’t even go to Sumner anymore).
The #2 is not an inefficiency. I am not going to pick on other routes etc. Your proposed changes to the #2 would not lead to any savings whatsoever. Really, it would be interesting if I were able by myself to persuade someone to invest in a pet project at that level. If I was that special, what would I my first wish be? I will contemplate that for a bit.
Your narrow obsession with keeping things exactly the same happens to align with Metro’s own tendencies toward inertia and “not rocking the boat”.
Yes, the #2 is an inefficiency. It’s slow, unreliable, late, stuck in traffic for hours and hours every day. Every single trip must be scheduled to layover for massive amounts of time at Lake Washington in order to compensate for all of the above.
Moving the #2 to Madison and live-looping it would have allowed Metro to run just as much service with fewer vehicles, saving a ton of money. And the bus would have been on time. And not excruciating to use.
Really, Joanna, what is so hard to understand about this?
Also, don’t be bashful: anyone connected with Metro knows that it was your blockheadedness that single-handedly threw the wrench in the Central District restructure.
We all suffer because of you.
Here is one other clever restructure Sound Transit could consider: Add a stop on the 595 at Star Lake P&R. This stop would add about two minutes to travel time. But it would allow the 595 to pick up additional passengers, improving its statistical performance, and relieving some Metro routes.
It would also allow riders headed to the airport to hop off and catch a 574 instead of having to take a more circuitous path to the airport. Similarly, riders headed to other destinations along Link’s path could take advantage of this transfer. This added connectivity would draw a new set of riders.
Well, this isn’t looking good for my commute. My usual method is to drive to the Kent-Des Moines P&R and take the 197, or I can catch the 121 or 122 from Marine View. Since those are both scheduled for either elimination or reduction, that leaves me with the 158 as the only realistic possibility. I would be tempted to drive up to Tukwila Station and take the Link, but the lot there is continually full.