A Route 4 trolleybus climbs Taylor Ave N in Queen Anne. (Ken Robinette)

The Seattle Transit Measure (STM) is a 0.15% sales tax that raises $50 million each year to boost bus service and make transit safer, faster, and more accessible in the City of Seattle. Originally passed in 2014 as the Seattle Transportation Benefit District (STBD), it was renewed and renamed in 2020 as the STM. The STM expires next spring and Mayor Wilson’s administration is expected to put a renewal on the ballot this fall.

This three-part series investigates how the STBD came to be, how it evolved into the STM, and what lies ahead given its impending expiration and the massive opportunity we have to expand bus service in Seattle.

Cuts That Never Came

After the 2008 Great Recession and subsequent collapse of sales tax revenue, King County Metro faced what they projected to be a dire fiscal cliff. Despite almost doubling fares, increasing fees, economizing, and exhausting reserve funds, the agency had run out of ways to save money. By the end of 2013, Metro predicted it needed to cut service by 16% to stay above water. To avert this, in April 2014, voters in King County were faced with a choice: increase the sales tax with a county-wide Transportation Benefit District to improve transit and roads, or cut bus service. County voters chose the latter and Metro began planning countywide service reductions.

Saving the day in Seattle was Mayor Ed Murray’s ‘Plan D’: a proposal to utilize the taxing authority of Seattle’s own Transportation Benefit District (already established in 2010 to fund road maintenance) to propose a Seattle-only measure to ward off the worst cuts in Seattle. In November 2014, voters in Seattle approved a 0.1% sales tax increase and an additional annual $60 Vehicle License Fee (VLF, or ‘car tab’) for vehicles registered in Seattle, beginning an ongoing saga of city-funded bus service in Seattle. 

Unexpectedly (and to the benefit of transit riders), between Seattle submitting its measure to King County Elections and voters approving it, King County canceled two-thirds of its planned service reductions, citing better than expected sales tax revenue. Thus, the city was blessed with $45 million a year earmarked by voters to fund bus service in a system that was no longer facing drastic cuts.

Expanding Frequent Transit, Off-Peak Service

Around 90% of the funds generated by the measure were dedicated to “Provide funding for Metro Transit service hours” (full text here). As such, Seattle began purchasing a lot of service hours from Metro. And as sales tax revenue increased, so did service.

The number of service hours funded by the STBD from 2015 to 2019 from SDOT’s annual reports.

The STBD also saved Seattle’s Night Owl network and restructured it from a bespoke, night-only network to the continuation of the day network we have today, providing night service on the 3, 5, 7, 11, 36, 44, 48, 49, 65, 67, 70, 120, 124, and RapidRides C, D, and E Lines.

Within 6 months of the STBD’s passage, Mayor Ed Murray’s administration unveiled what would become the 2015 Move Seattle Transportation Levy which included in it 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. At the time, only 25% of Seattle enjoyed this luxury. Thanks to STBD funding, 51% of households were within walking distance of very frequent transit in 2016. And by 2019, 70% of Seattle households had access to frequent transit, essentially reaching the goal 5 years early.

Percent of Seattle Households with Access to Very Frequent Transit Service from the STBD’s Fall 2020 report. (SDOT)

Between 2015 and 2020, funding allowed new routes to reach the Frequent Transit Network’s (FTN) targets. Routes 40, 41, 44, 48, 65, 67, 70, and 120 became part of the every 10 minute network and routes 1, 5,  10, 11, 14, 60,  62, 106, and 124 became part of the every 15 minute network, all because of added STBD funding.

The Frequent Transit Network in March 2020 (SDOT). Dark blue lines are 10-minute service, teal is 15, and grey is 30. Thick lines reached their frequency target only with STBD funding. Click to view full-size.

Low Income Access to Transit

In addition to funding transit service, the STBD allotted $2M a year to improve and support access to transit service for low-income riders. After ORCA LIFT was established in 2015 (with advocacy from the Transit Riders Union), this money expanded awareness of the program within Seattle, funded free ORCA cards, and funded the Downtown Circulator. By 2018, participation in ORCA LIFT had increased from 11% to 28% of eligible residents, far higher than the countywide adoption rate.

Funding was also allocated to increase awareness of the Senior Regional Reduced Fare Permit (RRFP), Youth Ambassadors, and a car tab rebate for low income drivers. In 2018, residents of Seattle Housing Authority (SHA) properties became eligible for free unlimited ORCA cards as well.

The STBD also funded free ORCA cards for low-income SPS students that didn’t already get an ORCA card or school bus service. In 2018, Seattle expanded this program to provide year round ORCA use for all SPS high school and income eligible middle school students as well as Seattle Promise scholars.

Metro Capacity Constraints, More Goals

By 2018, the STBD had amassed a very large reserve fund totalling about $38M (half a year of revenue) and King County Metro was unable to provide enough service to meet the STBD’s demands due to staffing and insufficient base capacity. Instead of increasing the reserves further, in 2018 Seattle City Council passed the first “material change” to the STBD to increase the number of programs the money could be spent on without voter approval.

The STBD reserve fund balance 2015-2020 from SDOT’s annual reports.

Included in the reforms was an increase in the number of routes eligible for STBD money from those with 80% of stops within Seattle to just 65% including all RapidRides, funding the ORCA Opportunity program (free ORCA cards for students), and allocating funding for transit capital projects like spot improvements to be completed before the levy’s expiration in 2020. The Trailhead Direct program was also created with the STBD funding 50% of its operations.

STBD spending by category. Transit service is the largest by far.

Tim Eyman Strikes Back

In 2019, for the third time, serial initiative-filer Tim Eyman filed and Washington voters approved Initiative 976, capping car tabs to $30 a year. A significant source of funding for Sound Transit and the STBD, it represented a huge blow to transit funding in Puget Sound.

Seattle and several other municipalities sued and the initiative was halted. While it was being sorted out in court, Seattle could still collect car tabs for the STBD, but couldn’t spend the revenue until the Washington Supreme Court ruled whether I-976 was constitutional. Despite this, the STBD reserve fund was large enough such that the revenue cut didn’t actually dent expenditures.

In October 2020, the state supreme court finally struck down the initiative, which unlocked the revenue Seattle had been saving.

STBD Legacy

By 2020, the STBD had been wildly successful, transforming Seattle into probably the only mid-sized American city where nearly everyone lived within walking distance of very frequent transit.

As the rest of the country suffered a ‘Ridership Emergency‘ over the 2010s, in 2018 Puget Sound  was the only major region in the United States that had more bus riders than in 2004. The region led the nation in transit ridership with 50% more riders than in 2004 even though the population only grew 25% over the same period.

Change in transit ridership by major US region 2002-2018. Seattle had 50% more riders in 2018 than 2004. The next closest was around 25% more. (Yonah Freemark)

The STBD also transformed the most expensive city in the state with the most regressive tax code into a place many more people could afford to live. ORCA LIFT revolutionized access to transit and its existence was only known largely due to STBD funding, all public high school students rode transit free, and the frequent transit network made living without a car possible in nearly the entire city.

Despite its successes, the STBD’s expiration in 2020 coincided with the largest change in travel behavior in modern American history. And, with sluggish transit ridership and a new mayor, the STBD’s renewal looked a lot different than its creation.

Nick Sattele (he/him) founded Fix the L8 and co-leads Central Seattle Greenways.  He grew up in transit desert suburbia in Ohio and made his way to Seattle in 2021. You can find him dancing or jumping rope faster than the bus.

34 Replies to “Seattle Transit Measure: History as the STBD (2014 to 2020)”

  1. Great historical recap, Nick!

    It bears mentioning what set off the campaign for ORCA LIFT.

    In 2012, the county council decided not to renew the Ride Free Area downtown, which meant the end of Pay as You Exit.

    Moving to Pay as you Enter simplified fare payment and enabled lots of outbound buses to move much faster. But it also slowed buses downtown, as well as in the bus tunnel, where joint operations with Link were already making for 12-or-more-minute slogs through the tunnel during peak hours.

    Metro pulled a smallish group of operators from driving duty to be ORCA Boarding Assistants.

    It was in this environment that STRU started gathering signatures to pressure the county council to create a committee to look at low-income fare options, a campaign that met with quick success.

    Katie Wilson was appointed to that committee, and she provided much of the research that backed up the committee’s work. It helped that Kitsap Transit already had a low-income fare card program decades before ORCA was rolled out, so the committee quickly focused on expanding that program.

    A Low Income Fare Implementation Task Force followed up, with Wilson again being a de facto leader of that group.

    The low-income fare card was rolled out in 2015, with participation by King County Metro, Link Light Rail, and Seattle Streetcar. A group of non-profits stepped forward to help riders get qualified, and served as distributors of ORCA LIFT cards.

    There was a short-lived effort for an initiative for a property tax increase, which helped pressure Mayor Murray to propose the sales tax increase instead. That effort was led by a former STB writer, FWIW.

    Our past Editor-in-Chief had also written an op-ed promoting the concept of the low-income ORCA Card, before the debate over the end of the Ride Free Area.

    After 2015, more services and agencies joined the low-income fare program. But several members of the first committee pointed out that the program was not designed for those who could not afford to pay a fare at all. That gets into the next chapter.

    1. Good context! ORCA LIFT was unfortunately very difficult to research. There are a lot of op-eds and opinions out there but I couldn’t find an article spelling out what exactly happened after the fact. Even on the TRU website I couldn’t find a “we won” post.

    2. As background on the Ride Free Area, it was established in the 1970s to attract shoppers to downtown Seattle after the flight-to-the-suburbs decline, as an alternative to a circulator shuttle, and to facilitate office workers going to restaurants for lunch. Seattle paid for it, but as Metro’s expenses increased over the decades, the contribution was no longer enough so Metro was subsidizing it.

      The 2008 recession finally hit Metro in 2012. The state authorized and the county adopted a 2-year tax surcharge to tide it over and forestall cuts. I was at the county council meeting. Some councilmembers were against the tax. A grand bargain was achieved, where (1) they voted for the tax, (2) the Ride Free Area was abolished (thus eliminating Metro’s subsidy of it), and (3) a free downtown circulator route was created to replace the RFA for homeless people going between shelters and services in Pioneer Square, First Hill, and downtown.

  2. Question, 40 doesn’t run every 10-minute between 10am-4pm currently. Did it run every 10 minute during mid-day back then? If this 10 minute criteria is met by only running it during peak period, shouldn’t 28X, 62, 372 also be considered as 10-minute service?

    1. Did it run every 10 minute during mid-day back then?

      I don’t think so, but it is hard to track down. The Wayback Machine has some of the old schedules, but sometimes they don’t load. But this was the schedule in March 2020. This was before the big cutbacks. According to the old pdf as well as that article, the 40 only ran every fifteen minutes before the cutbacks.

      It is possible that it ran every ten minutes before then, but I doubt it. This is the webpage from before then but I can’t get it to load.

      So I think you are right, I don’t think it every ran every 10 minutes midday. It is worth noting that it does list the 40 as one of the buses that got extra money from the city. So while I think it is unlikely it ran every 10 minutes it wouldn’t shock me if it did (although that would mean cutbacks before 2020 and I see no evidence of that in either the official documents or on old blog posts here).

      3. OK, I finally got a schedule to load from a previous time period: https://web.archive.org/web/20200318215412/https://kingcounty.gov/depts/transportation/metro/schedules-maps/route/040.aspx#weekday. So this is “Effective 9-21-19 thru 3-20-20”. According to the SDOT report, in Spring of 2019, they “Improved Routes 40 and 120 to 10-minute or better all-day
        service”. This is also before the pandemic hit the United States. So this is when the buses are supposed to be running have “10-minute or better all-day service”.

        Yet that clearly isn’t reflected in the schedule. I think the report is just wrong.

      4. Ah, interesting. It’s possible it would have eventually if it weren’t for the pandemic. Route 40 quite long and not particularly fast, so I could see it taking a while to build up the staffing required to run it every 10 minutes without taking away from other routes.

    2. The issue was midday service, so 10-minute peaks don’t count. The STBD boosted the 48, 65, and 67 to 10 minutes, and its expiration lost them that. I think the 44 and 45 were boosted to 10 minutes too then but I don’t remember for sure.

      The 40 started when RapidRide D was created (2012?). Initially it was hourly evenings. At some point it got 15-minute full-time service and 10-minute daytime service, but I don’t remember whether it was at the same time as the other routes or later, and then it lost it again.

      The E has also been on-again, off-again with 10-minute daytime service.

      2. No, the 67 is needed for trips not near the stations, like when I was living at 56th going to a friend’s pizza parlor at 80th or to something around 40th.

      3. The 67 should be rerouted. Until we have sufficient buses on a corridor between 65th and 45th, the buses should be on the same corridor. For now that means moving the 67 to Roosevelt/Ravenna/University Way (like the 45 and future 77). Oh, and the 45 should follow the same path instead of covering 15th. That would establish a little spine between Roosevelt Station and the University District Station.

        Between 65th and Northgate Way it is fine. But north of Northgate Way it should be combined with the 348. Doing so would enable more one-seat rides while saving service hours. The bus would be straighter (straighter buses are faster buses). It would just be a better network in general (more grid like, complements Link better, etc.). But otherwise the route is fine and good frequency is justified.

      4. Ross, I’m not totally following you here. The 67 doesn’t go north of Northgate way (though I wish it did – it would be a great way to get up to the Ethiopian Food District in Pinehurst.) And routing it over to University rather than staying on Roosevelt would make it less straight and slower.

      5. Ross wants to consolidate the 67 and 348 into one route. So it would remain on Roosevelt Way past Northgate Way rather than detouring to Northgate station and Northgate way.

        The issue of Roosevelt Way vs University Way in the U-District is a longstanding debate about whether both streets need north-south service. If you consolidate it all on University Way, that gives ultra-frequency in the highest-ridership segment with a lot of intra-village trips (like when I lived on 56th going to 40th-ish). The tradeoff is that if you’re at Monkey Pub or Scarecrow Video (52nd) going to 42nd-ish, you’d have no bus route unless you walk four blocks east to the Ave and then four blocks west again. It would also affect trips going south to 45th to transfer to the 44 going west to Wallingford or Ballard, where you’d have to backtrack a few blocks on the 44.

        If you’re going further south to Eastlake or SLU, you can transfer to the 70 just as easily from an Ave route as from a Roosevelt route.

      6. Mike is right. I worded it poorly. Instead of looping around, a bus from Maple Leaf would keep going north (through Pinehurst). It would be merged with the 348. The only drawback is that it couldn’t be through-routed (it would be too long). This combined 67/348 would maybe end at the triangle next to Husky Stadium. (It gets a little tricky to deal with the various routes through campus but that’s the basic idea.)

        routing it over to University rather than staying on Roosevelt would make it less straight and slower.

        Yes, but that is a small price to pay for the additional service along a shared corridor. You would have three buses overlapping on the Roosevelt/Ravenna/University Way corridor between 65th and Campus Parkway. Thus if you are trying to get from say, 50th & Brooklyn to 75th & Roosevelt you go to the bus stop on The Ave and catch any of those three buses.

        If there was sufficient service than it would make sense to serve both corridors. This is where the the RapidRide J come in. Eventually we will be able to extend that bus (along the Roosevelt corridor) to north of the Roosevelt Station (e. g. 67th & Roosevelt). That means you have a frequent bus that stays on the Roosevelt corridor (to Eastlake) and three less frequent buses on The Ave/Ravenna/Roosevelt.

  3. It can be confusing for a taxpayer to support transit with repeated requests from the City/ benefit district, Metro and Sound Transit. Informed taxpayers can grasp the differences — but I do wonder if a more coordinated approach with longer sunset periods would help, or maybe the referenda should offer more flexibility on where the funds go.

    Most big cities aren’t having three different agencies asking the same voters for dedicated taxes to support transit.

    1. I don’t think it is that complicated. Voters in the county can support Metro transit or not. Voters in Seattle can support additional funding for the buses or not. They often coordinate when it comes to ballot measures. The last transit measure in the city was too small in part because the mayor thought it might hurt the other (non-transit) ballot measure. Both passed easily (the mayor made a big mistake in asking for such a small package).

      1. “The last transit measure in the city was too small in part because the mayor thought it might hurt the other (non-transit) ballot measure.”

        At the time they were afraid a larger renewal wouldn’t pass because people were feeling poor from the recession/covid impacts.

    2. Most people understand the difference between Metro and Sound Transit, and that a levy for one doesn’t affect the other, so that if you want both, you need both levies.

      1. In my experience, this is not true. I think most transit riders understand the difference, but people who do not ride transit (the vast majority of people in King County) do not understand that there are multiple transit agencies with overlapping service areas.

      2. I think most people’s understanding of transit operations is basically limited to a vague awareness that Sound Transit runs the trains (except Amtrak), something called “Metro” runs the buses in King County, and SDOT fills potholes. Most people also can’t name their representatives in government other than the President of the United States.

        The cumulative burden of regressive taxes is certainly worth keeping in mind, but voters aren’t “confused” by repeated levy renewals; it’s just adds to the perception of inefficient government attempting to raise taxes. But this is no new phenomenon and people are generally happy to approve taxes for stuff they think they might benefit from, or benefit people they know.

      3. “I think most people’s understanding of transit operations is basically limited to a vague awareness that Sound Transit runs the trains (except Amtrak), something called “Metro” runs the buses in King County, and SDOT fills potholes.”

        “The cumulative burden of regressive taxes is certainly worth keeping in mind, but voters aren’t “confused” by repeated levy renewals.”

        These statements seem contradictory. If someone only has a vague understanding then to me they have a degree of confusion. And if someone thinks that the much more frequent City levy renewals are about potholes because that’s what SDOT does, then asking for a levy that again goes to more transit service is going to be confusing to those people who have this vague understanding.

      4. Al, it’s not confusing for folks who lump everything under “the government”. It’s ignorant, sure, but not inherently confusing. If anything, the only thing that’s confusing to non-nerds is that “the government” keeps asking for more money yet services don’t seem to get better and problems don’t seem to get solved. But that goes for the whole breadth of government agencies. I don’t think it really matters. People are used to getting constantly pinged for more money and they just look at The Stranger or The Urbanist or the Seattle Times to tell them whether they put a thumbs up or thumbs down, and move on with their lives.

      5. To clarify, I don’t know how much this actually affects the election results. I mean, the same people I know who don’t ride transit and are confused by the difference between Metro and Sound Transit still vote for all the transit referendums. On the margin there are people that think “we’ve had too many referendums, so I’m voting against this one”, but most people just vote for all of them or none of them. This is based on their own ideological opinion of taxes in general.

        It’s worth keeping in mind that the ideologically pro-revenue base vote is increasing over time. Seattle is the fastest-growing city in the North, and the people who are moving here are, generally speaking, more inclined to vote for taxes than the people already here. That they chose to move here instead of Texas or Florida is often politically-motivated. At some point, we’ll have enough such voters that a countywide transit tax referendum can’t possibly fail. We might already be there.

        Also keep in mind… when the last one failed in 2014, that was an unusually conservative year, electorally-speaking.

    2. Those were two different periods with different effects.

      The 2014 recession cuts were planned to be in four phases over a year, with a total 20%-ish reduction if I remember. The first two phases went into effect. The last two were canceled, because Dembrowski argued that the economy and tax revenue were recovering and they wouldn’t be needed. Metro laid off drivers for the first two phases.

      The next year between March and November 2015, Seattle drew up the STBD, the economy recovered, the last two phases of cuts were canceled, and the STBD passed. Suddenly Metro had to pivot from layoff mode to hiring mode. It couldn’t get all the drivers back, and it couldn’t hire new ones quickly for all the STBD’s needs.

      In 2020 there was another recession. 50% of US boomers reached retirement age, so they were retreating from the workforce. Some retired early due to the pandemic disruptions, and Metro fired drivers who refused to get vaccinated. By 2022 ridership was recovering, but Metro was impacted by the nationwide labor shortage due to the boomers’ retirement. That affected both drivers and bus-maintenance workers. That hindered planned frequency improvements in the Northgate and Lynnwood Link restructures. ST Express was also going to fill in frequency in 2022 on the 535, 550, 594, and maybe others (522?), but that was swallowed by the driver shortage too. Metro is gradually digging out of the shortage but it’s taking a long time.

      1. A minor correction (as stated in Nick’s article): the STBD funding for boosted transit service was proposed and approved in 2014, in the midst of Metro’s proposed cuts and mid-year cancellation of some of the cuts, not in 2015.

  5. Metro should generally double frequency across the board, like the cities who are serious about transit have. 60-minute routes should be 30 minutes, 30-minute routes should be 15 minutes, and 15-minute routes should be 7.5 minutes. This should be the long-term goal the levies and governments are aiming for.

    Metro Connects falls far short of this. I thought Frequent routes meant 15 minutes minimum until 10pm every day like RapidRide, but Metro has given itself wiggle room by saying 15 minutes until 7pm weekdays. Most of Seattle’s core routes are already at that level, which means they may not see any increase even after Metro’s long-range plan is fulfilled. This needs to be fixed.

    I’m being generous here because no route should be less than 15 minutes, except maybe 30 minutes in the rural fringe like Snoqualmie. For instance, the 165 (Kent, 132nd, GRCC) is hourly Sundays; it should be half-hourly. The 226 (east Bellevue) is hourly evenings; it should be at least 30 minutes if not 15.

    1. Metro Connects is unfunded. It has so much service subsidy assumed that it does not provide good guidance to planners doing restructures today; they are better off relying on the service guidelines.

  6. Nick et al,

    The STM is just a rebranding by SDOT; it is still based on the TBD legislation.
    In between 2014 and 2020, the Legislature amended the TBD RCW to give executives more say; the prior version gave all the power to the legislative bodies. Both cities and counties can form TBD; the RCW discusses the overlapping.

    The 2014 versions of both the county (that failed in April) and Seattle (that passed in November) used the vehicle license fee (VLF). Under the RCW, the first part can be levied councilmatically; subsequent increments require voter approval.

    The 2014 King County attempt was clever in allocating some for general transportation and some for transit. The road fund in the unincorporated area is broke and in crisis. All 39 cities need transportation revenue. The transit pitch was awkward. At the end of the great recession, they were saying it would preserve service. In south King County, there is far too little service; they know they are subsidizing service in Seattle.

    The April date seems mistaken. Voter turnout was low. Transit measures do much better with young voters. But getting the county measure out of the way allowed Seattle go it alone. By November, the recession was over and further Metro cuts were not on the table.

    In November 2014, the first round of Metro cuts were implemented; they largely fell on districts 1, 4, and 6; the reductions ordinance had been adopted a few months earlier. I suspect they were not really necessary, as the sales tax revenue had recovered. The end of the recession meant that the subsequent phases of reductions were not enacted.

    In 2020, an Eyman initiative about the VLF was in the courts. The County did not consider its TBD much given Covid. Seattle did not consider using the VLF. The Council debated one tenth v. two tenths. They compromised on .15 cents. That revenue stream was smaller than in 2014. Recall that SDOT spent significant hours in March 2016 to split lines C and D and extend the C Line to SLU. With the smaller 2020 stream, SDOT withdrew the 50K + hours they had used to split lines C and D; they also withdrew hours from several other routes; see the discussion about routes 41, 65, 67. Metro kept lines C and D split by administratively cutting trips on several other routes. See the fall 2020 reductions to Seattle routes.

    For many years, the number of hours or service subsidy was the first constraint to adding service. In 2018-2019, it became the number of peak coaches. After Covid, the first constraint has been the number of operators. During Covid, Metro laid off its part time operators. In fall 2023, Metro suspended routes and trips to reduce the scale of the network to the level that could be operators by the number of drivers on staff. Since then, they are trying to increase the pool through hiring, training, and retention; there are retirements as well.

    In the 2019 era, SDOT and Metro began to use odd approaches to service that did not use coaches; first Ride2; later Via; since March 2023, rebranded as Metro Flex. They do not seem cost-effective.

    The county and Seattle may have a TBD dance this year. I hope they figure out how to have one countywide election or two coordinated elections in November. I also wonder about the six-year term; is that ideal. South King County needs more service. The subarea financial rules were lost with the new service guidelines in 2011. How to get to yes?

    1. Stay tuned for more articles. Also concerned about the 6 year timeline, mostly because the Seattle Transportation Levy also expires in 6 years

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