For most transit agencies in the United States the largest constraint to providing more service is funding. In Seattle, that luckily has not been a constraint in recent years. Instead, our transit agencies have struggled to operate the amount of service voters have funded.
Before the pandemic, King County Metro could not deliver the amount of service Seattle wanted to purchase via the STBD. Labor shortages and limited bus base capacity meant money dedicated for service had to be diverted to capital projects and other programs.
In 2020, hundreds of millions of dollars of lost sales tax and fare revenue forced Metro to significantly downsize to stay above water by cutting service and reducing its workforce. Additionally, the City of Seattle reduced funding for night, evening, and weekend bus service and the fall 2020 service change was done under the assumption that Seattle’s Transportation Benefit District funding would lapse (which it did for four months). Coupled with very high turnover, mechanics, parts, and operators were all in short supply for years.
In 2023, Metro signed a new labor agreement that increased wages. Recruiting issues persisted, including poor safety that culminated in the murder of bus operator Shawn Yim in December 2024. Metro has invested in improving safety and since 2023, its rider survey has revealed a significant increase in riders feeling safe at night.
Pre-Pandemic Service Coming Fall 2027
Those investments are finally paying off. Since cutting service in the fall of 2023, Metro has increased service in each of its twice-yearly service changes since. More importantly, according to Metro spokesman Jeff Switzer, “our adopted 2026/2027 budget assumes Metro will operate at pre-covid service levels by fall 2027 and we are currently on track to have the workforce to deliver this” (emphasis mine).
“Consistent with Metro’s Service Recovery Plan, Metro plans to restore Metro-funded service hours that were suspended during the pandemic”, Switzer said. “In total, Metro-funded service hours are planned to be higher than early 2020 pre-COVID service levels in fall 2027 due to the handful of new investments in place (ex. RapidRide G Line) and planned, and current Seattle Transit Measure investment.”
Metro currently employs nearly 2,600 bus operators including 2,300 full-time and 280 part-time operators. This equals roughly 2,480 full-time equivalent (FTEs) operators. In 2025, Metro saw an increase of 150 operators and needs roughly 270 FTEs to restore service to pre-COVID levels.
Other constraints
Before the pandemic, base capacity was a limiting factor in more bus service but Switzer indicated “Metro does not anticipate the need for additional base capacity in the near term…Metro’s fleet is expected to accommodate all planned service increases through 2026 and 2027, which will bring the agency in line with a full recovery from pre‑pandemic service levels.” Metro recently unveiled new battery-electric buses that will operate out of the new Tukwila Base. More importantly, Metro’s “peak‑to‑base service ratio” (the ratio of peak to off peak service) has moved away from peak service allowing more service hours to be provided throughout the day with the same number of buses.
Retire route 550 on March 29th. It is stupid we have to wait until October for this. Those bus hours could be better used somewhere else. ( ie routes 270 and 251)
Yes, the 270 runs such poor frequency when it should be running 15 minutes at it’s worst on weekends. You should also restore the Medina routing rather than routing it on Bellevue Way and attach it to the B Line (which should be done as a SEPERATE project). Then you would now have two B lines, one runs from Downtown Redmond to Eastgate and the other from U District to Crossroads.
Splitting the B is in Metro’s Rapid ride expansion plan.
https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/07/23/rapidride-future-and-prioritization/
It’s in tiers 2 and 3, so late 2030s or 2040s, after the I, J, K, 36, and 150.
270 can run on Bellevue Way, but it should stop in front of the Macys mall entrance at NE 6th ST. This is also the heart of the Bellevue Way entertainment and dining district, a significant employment hub. It is where people want to BE on the west side of downtown Bellevue. It’s a must-serve! The bus should then make the turn on NE 4th ST. instead of 8th, then go to the transit center. Yes, a few feet of landscaping would probably need to be sacrificed to do this.
Even worse! Actually, the bus cannot quite stop *at* Bellevue Way and NE 8th ST going eastbound, because it would need to get over to the left turn lane. So that bus stop would have to be at least a block away, meaning it’s an extra block just to walk to the intersection, then wait for the signal, then you’re still not even at a mall entrance. Going westbound on 8th, it probably cannot stop in the right turn lane, and if it stops around the corner, you would also need to take out a good chunk of landscaping at the Hyatt. All of these issues are avoided by making the turn at 4th and serving the area with a bus stop at 6th.
Also hey Mike, the RR 150 won’t be the first RapidRide line with an express freeway component, the C and H already run express freeway segments which includes the West Seattle Bridge and SR 99.
But it’s unusual to have an active RapidRide line on I-5.
Those bus service hours are ST’s and idk if they can be used for Metro. When they retire the 550 those service hours are just gonna go to increased 556 service, 535 Sunday service, 30 minute 535 weekend service and stuff like that. The 574’s frequency increase is going to be funded via the truncation to Federal Way and idk where 515 and 580 service hours are gonna go, probably to the 513.
Sound transit manages the express busses but if I remember correctly the operators are still KC metro employees. Same as the Link is ST funded and managed, but still run by KCM operators. ST handles more or the logistical/engineering side.
Service hours come from each agency. ST’s mandate is regional transit; it can’t just fund random Metro routes. It could do more to supplement a transition to a future Link extension, but you’re talking about long-term service after sb extension is opened.
“ST’s mandate is regional transit”
To me 271 is just as regional as 550. When will Sound Transit fund SR 520 cross-lake service like 255 and 271?
271 is something neither Seattle nor Bellevue would single-handily fund (especially true for 271 which benefits both Bellevue and Seattle residents), so why won’t Sound Transit fund 271 (or 270 however it is called) after 550 is gone?
To me 271 is just as regional as 550.
I agree. It is worth noting that ST will run plenty of similar buses after East Link crosses the lake, just not that one. Go figure. I get the feeling that ST and Metro aren’t communicating very well.
To me, the UW/U District is a better destination/transfer point than Downtown Seattle. It just feels safer by the wait there and carries less traffic… Also transferring in Downtown Seattle is a headache! I would get lost transferring from the 1 Line to the 550 in Downtown Seattle, so I just used the 1 Line and 271 to Bellevue.
Theoretically ST could just not fund as much bus service, allowing Metro to better deal with the existing driver shortage. But the plan is for ST to fund other routes. The main problem is that they will wait so long before implementing those changes.
It’s stupid, but 6 months of redundant service doesn’t cost that much in the grand scheme of things, and if improved service on other routes doesn’t happen until October anyway, removing the 550 trips now isn’t actually buying anything.
Having the redundancy also acts as an insurance policy, in that it reduces the service disruption in the event that Link over I-90 encounters unexpected issues in the first few months, and needs to be shut down for a couple of weekends.
Also, as proven today, the 2 line might still have some kinks to work out. Trains have been out all morning through Bellevue, only running Spring -> Redmond.
Running six months of a frequent but completely redundant bus line for what is basically bureaucratic reasons is an embarrassing waste.
If we really need a backup for the 2 line — and I don’t think that’s necessary — ST should just pay the 550 operators to sit in buses parked at base until they’re needed. That’d save the wear on the buses, thousands of gallons of diesel fuel, and reduce traffic.
Having the redundancy also acts as an insurance policy, in that it reduces the service disruption in the event that Link over I-90 encounters unexpected issues in the first few months, and needs to be shut down for a couple of weekends.
Yeah, OK, so I could see it for a couple weeks — maybe a month. But six months? That is just weird. Keep in mind, we’ve done other major changes (UW Link, Northgate Link) and almost immediately changed the buses. East Link is fundamentally no different. Sure, it could have issues — those expansions could have had issues as well.
This is one of the basic problems with Sound Transit. They keep imagining this mythical, distant future. You here phrases like “100 year plans”. By all means, creating or expanding a metro is a measure-twice-cut-once proposition. You have to get it right the first time. But not only did they not get it right the first time (e. g. no First Hill station) but they keep focusing on silly projects like trains to Issaquah while ignoring how riders are supposed to use transit now.
This is great news, especially as we start to think about the next STM (or County-wide measure).
I feel like Metro should increase their sales tax to 1.2 percent to fund more service and their future RapidRide projects. Community Transit had great success in doing this and I feel like 0.9 percent is too low for a transit system covering a county larger than Snohomish and with more frequent buses when it should be the equivalent or greater than CT’s taxing authority… Of course with permission from the state!
King County will likely put a transportation benefit district funding measure on the ballot this fall.
Because after the sticker shock many people just got with 20+% increases in their 2026 property tax bill, and sales tax increases that keep piling to now 10.4 – 10.6% in most places, voters just want some more “it’s just x pennies on a $100” taxes. This has to stop. We all want nice things, but the tap is running dry for many people to keep sustaining the steady increases of taxes that outstrips earning potential. Taking on more transit taxes just further turns this area into two classes — the poor and the rich.
Regressive taxes are bad, yes, but social services not just “nice things”, they often save tons of money in the long run. It’s cheaper to offer better transit service than to build and maintain all the roads necessary to keep people moving in SOVs.
Thanks to anti-tax reactionaries in in previous decades, our tax system slowly bleeds governments dry, forcing them to get voter approval for regressive flat-rate taxes every few years for services everyone needs and wants. The recent increases in property tax rates are a correction from years of slowly declining tax rates while population and property values skyrocketed, and almost entirely due to voters approving sorely-needed levies while their property values skyrocket.
Nathan Dickey,
The problem with sales taxes and property taxes is their “boom or bust” nature. The Seattle economy has been on a 30 year heater! As the economy grew and property values rose, the City (and State) got more tax money.
But that’s not going to go on forever. If spending stays at current levels, Washington State and Seattle are in deep trouble in an economic downturn. When the Jumpstart tax came online, you saw how COVID related costs in the budget just gobbled up the extra money. Now Jumpstart taxes are just part of the general fund, right?
I asked Mike Orr awhile back, and now I’ll ask you the same question… if a transit agency is looking at the fair box to cover a certain percentage of operational costs, do you support cutting back operations (reducing service) if there’s a drop in the fair box income? If you don’t, where does the money come from? Portland is getting hit with this right now.
I think there is still jockeying between King County and Seattle around this. It didn’t appear to me from the County TBD meeting last week that any county councilmembers were particularly enthusiastic about increasing Metro funding (except Balducci). Hopefully that changes
>I asked Mike Orr awhile back, and now I’ll ask you the same question…
tacomee, I don’t believe you’re asking those questions in good faith, so I’m not going to dignify them with a substantive response.
Nathan Dickey,
I have real life experience working with real life local governments in several cities. I am 100% asking these questions in good faith. If you really believe transit needs to funded partly by the money that comes from the fare box, what happens when the fare box revenue drops?
I’ve posted here more than a few times that I believe fares shouldn’t be a big part of funding transit for this very reason. It’s just not a stable revenue source for something that’s absolutely needed.
Mike never answered my question, but I’d guess his answer is to lean hard on the fare box revenue until there’s a shortfall, then jack up the sales tax to make up the difference? That’s been the solution over the last couple of decades for Metro, right?
Anybody who looks at the deep budget problems Portland has right now and doesn’t think those problems can’t move North is just foolish.
Sales tax ebbs and flows with the business cycle, but my understanding of WA property taxes is the overall revenue collected by a levy does not go down (it does go up in response to new construction) – if property values drop, that impacts how to levy is allocated but not the
This is why essential services should all be funded by property tax, but bonded projects can work with sales tax funding.
> overall revenue collected by a levy does not go down
This is true; the rule is that total baseline property tax revenue can only increase 1%, so well-run cities maximize that revenue increase every year. The point is that basic economic inflation (almost) always outpaces that 1% revenue growth cap, so increasingly large levies and other taxes need to be approved by voters every few years.
Nathan,
No, when property values drop the limiting factor on property taxes becomes the $10 per $1000 rate limit ($5.60 for local government taxes). This limit isn’t usually limiting for governments, since the 1% levy limit is more restrictive when property values are rising, and it only applies to “regular levies”. I’m under the impression that most voter approved levies are special levies, but I don’t consider myself an expert
Blumdrew, I think you’re confusing the 1% I’m referring with the 1% constitutional levy limit.
MRSC has a fairly good explanation: https://mrsc.org/explore-topics/finance/revenues/property-tax
There’s the hard statewide limit on property tax rate, which is set at $10/$1000 (1% of property value). There are stricter limits for cities and counties and such.
And then there’s the limit of how much a district’s levy can increase each year, which is 1% above the previous year except if new construction (or some other stuff) is completed, or voters approve a levy. As MRSC explains, cities have to be careful when adopting levy increases as to avoid breaking the 1% limit and also avoid hitting the constitutional limits.
Nathan,
I’m well aware of both 1% limits. My point is that the rate limit is generally limiting when property values are falling, while the levy limit is generally limiting when property values are rising. It is absolutely possible for the 1% rate limit to force a local government to reduce property tax collections in absolute terms. If a city has $10M in collections on $1B of assessed value, and assessed value falls to $900M, they will be forced to reduce the amount they collect to $9M. Obviously, this isn’t generally a concern – as falling property values is hardly something on people’s minds in Seattle – but it is something to consider. And it can be relevant in small communities around the state that haven’t experienced the generalized boom Seattle has.
I wouldn’t even say that it’s bad per se (though I think 1% is far too low a limit). If property values are falling, it’s probably because of a general economic crisis and no structural adjustment to tax policy can really help with that in the short term (though of course higher property taxes are generally good for reducing land speculation and in turn potentially limiting the impact that has on economic crises, but that’s a bit besides the point).
Ah, I see what you mean. I’m just not aware of any municipalities actually charging the full $10/$1000 (or $5.9 for local districts), for that exact reason. It may have became an issue for some municipalities after 2008 (as discussed in this 2014 STB article: https://seattletransitblog.com/2014/05/17/seattles-property-tax-limit/).
I’ll start new threads for the fare and tax issues because this subthread is turning into several issues at once.
The statewide package of 2015 allowed CT the higher rate, bot not Metro. Metro is still capped at nine tenths.
The last good opportunity for a good local option was the one percent MVET in the agreement between the three executives in 2009 on the SR-99 deep bore tunnel. Executive Sims asked for it. Governor Gregoire backed out during the legislative session. The MVET is both more progressive and robust than the sales tax.
Is Metro at its maximum?
One big question is whether Metro will prioritize restoring service that was removed during the pandemic, or whether the new service will go elsewhere in the county, meaning that routes which lost service will never get it back.
For example, my route, the 255, was reduced to half-hourly on weekday evenings, ostensibly due to the driver shortage, and I have no idea if the end of the driver shortage is actually going to bring the service back.
As quoted in the article, Metro is following their Service Recovery Plan (established in 2023) which calculated how many routes had suspended or reduced operations due to the operator shortage. Metro has said they expect to be able to resume all reduced or suspended service for all routes, presumably unless that route was modified by a subsequent restructure. Route 255 is not being modified by the restructure planned around the 2 Line (East Link Connections), and as of 2023, had lost over 5,000 hours of annual service hours. If Metro is able to meet their hiring and retention goals, those 5,000 hours will return by the end of next year.
A trunk route from Kirkland to Seattle is high priority, so I wouldn’t worry about the 255 not getting its frequency back. Most of the suspended routes are peak expresses, and ridership is moving away from those and Metro is restructuring away from them as the article notes.
The 15 will likely be restored because of crowding on the D. Metro’s Eastside plan includes a lot of Issaquah-Mercer Island service, including the peak-only 218, so I doubt Issaquah will need anything more that that. Other suspended peak expresses may have lackluster ridership now, so the hours can be recycled into all-day routes like the 255.
“Most of the suspended routes are peak expresses, and ridership is moving away from those”
Maybe ridership is moving away from them because they don’t exist anymore, or the frequency/ late /cancelled trips has gotten so bad that it’s not worth using? Lol
“Maybe ridership is moving away from them because they don’t exist anymore”
This is the obvious reason, you tell me how ridership would be on a route that doesn’t even run. These suspended routes are frequently peak routes, so I can tell peak routes do horribly because they only run at peak and fail to get a good bite out of the crowding on popular routes that they’re supposed to be covering up for.
You can tell from other routes that aren’t suspended, both peak expresses and all-day routes. There used to be two hundred people waiting at downtown bus stops at 5pm; that disappeared in the pandemic and never came back.
Saturday is now rivaling weekdays’ ridership, and in some cases has surpassed it.
Well the road traffic hasn’t gone down. So clearly people are still commuting. It’s just that less has chose to do so by bus.
People are also boycotting Metro over service cuts. After 257/311 went away, people vowed not to ride the new 256, and the new 256 served more park and rides than places where people lived – and took extra time navigating through SLU to slow down the trip even further.
Some routes like the 162 always performed poorly since it duplicates Sounder. I get why those are going. But they need to be reconsider some of the peak routes that currently have no other reliable option other than using 3-4 transfers and long wait times. Metro was considering actually turning a lot of peak expresses into all day bidirectional expresses, but threw out the plans after going all in with abandoning peak riders after the pandemic.
Peak hour routes can be done without much extra service hours.
Find any all day express that operates, and find a local route that connects to those expresses. During peak, there needs to be added capacity anyways. Through route a version of the local service with the peak. The bus can come back as the regular express run so it doesn’t have to waste time driving back to the start.
They already do this with the 101/102/150. Operators start their day as the 102 and some end their day with the 102, while running the 101/150 for the rest of their block.
Even without much of a service change, it will at least encourage more people to use the buses. Transfers scare a lot of people and it’s not like Metro/ST even tried to make the transfers reliable/timable either.
“People are also boycotting Metro over service cuts. After 257/311 went away, people vowed not to ride the new 256, and the new 256 served more park and rides than places where people lived”
What!? So you’re saying those people are refusing to drive to let’s just say Brickyard P&R rather than to take the bus at a stop in front of their house!? Man, talk about delays.
We should be worried about Route 255, given the Metro plan for the K line and its alignment; both the outer terminal and pathway are threatened.
Ridership on the 256 is fine. The 256 has as much ridership as the 257 plus the 311, which is to say it’s doing a decent job of replacing the two hourly routes with a single half-hourly route
“Well the road traffic hasn’t gone down. So clearly people are still commuting. It’s just that less has chose to do so by bus.”
Traffic decreased significantly during the pandemic. It returned to its pre-pandemic level around 2022 or 2023. Longer-term, some people switched from 9-5 commuting to large downtowns, to midday errands to other places, staggered start times, and/or a few days a week. Changing destinations changes whether transit is feasible, because there may be a route to your job but not to some random big-box store or strip mall.
In downtown Seattle, pedestrian counts and hotel stays are back to their pre-pandemic level, and new apartments have brought more residents, but office workers are lagging behind.
Metro ridership is around 60% of pre-pandemic level last I heard. There are several factors in this, since different routes and neighborhoods have been affected differently. The G is a major success and quickly became one of Metro’s top routes. But the 10, 11, 12, and 49 went from sometimes 15 minutes to 20 minutes across the board (30 minutes evening), which is an overall decrease, so that discourages some riders and trips. (It did increase access to 15th & Pine.)
South King County overall has been getting all-day frequency increases in the 2010s restructures, post-2020 equity policies, and in the upcoming restructure this fall.
Reliability is also a factor. In the early and mid 2010s many routes were routinely late 5-15 minutes almost every day due to traffic congestion. My 14N, 71/72/73, and 131/132, were subject to this. The economic recovery and Seattle TBD in 2015 allowed Metro to address the problem with more buses and standby buses to mitigate the congestion. In the post-2022 return of congestion, unreliability returned too because Metro doesn’t have the funds to address it. That’s one reason we need a larger STM and a countywide Metro measure — or more transit-priority lanes.
This is the obvious reason, you tell me how ridership would be on a route that doesn’t even run.
Yeah, what Mike said. I’m not sure you realize what happens with these peak runs. Take the RapidRide D and 15. The RapidRide is the standard line. It is going to run frequently day and night. But if it is really crowded then Metro is forced to run the bus more often then they would like. Instead of running every six minutes it runs every couple minutes (just because of crowding). This benefits riders, but not that much. From a frequency standpoint you would be better off running some other bus more often (e. g. from every half hour to every fifteen minutes). Thus you are only running the bus so often because of crowding. At that point, the 15 makes sense. Not only does it give riders an express to downtown, but it saves Metro money. Running an express overlay is cheaper than running an *additional* standard bus. It is all based on crowding.
But in this case, there just hasn’t been that much demand. Various buses are not crowded. As a result, running additional peak runs — or new routes that are meant to deal with the overflow — just doesn’t make sense.
In 2030 Metro faces a $1 million budget shortfall, and in 2032-2033 it will have a $755 million reserve shortfall. King County had a meeting on it February 25th according to an email alert, so we should find out the results of that.
So full service may be short-lived (3 years), and the first part of any countywide Metro or transportation levy would go to just preserving 2027 service levels and restoring reliability (=additional buses to mitigate traffic congestion and standby buses to swoop in when a bus breaks down or gets stuck in traffic).
Mike Orr,
Right now Metro is OK, but the whole city is certainly in flux. The whole nation is in flux, but Seattle does seem to be an epicenter. I wouldn’t guess anything about Seattle in 2032 and if I did, it wouldn’t be positive.
A recession, and it’s quite possible Seattle is already in one, changes the equation. I’d give Metro strong marks because the agency is not currently in trouble. Many Seattle institutions, like public education, are having economic turmoil before the recession takes hold. Metro has made the right steps the last couple of years.
At some point, voters in Seattle are going to just say no to raising taxes. The idea that every transportation and school levy are just going to automatically pass is incorrect. Seattle has had an historic 30 year run of good financial news. Chances are that’s ending one way or another and so will automatic passing of levies. Although of all the social good providers in Greater Seattle, Metro certainly is the most transparent and straight forward. Sound Transit, Seattle public schools and the Homeless Industrial Complex are all way behind Metro in terms of public goodwill.
> I wouldn’t guess anything about Seattle in 2032 and if I did, it wouldn’t be positive.
When have you guessed anything positive about Seattle?
> Sound Transit, Seattle public schools and the Homeless Industrial Complex are all way behind Metro in terms of public goodwill.
What does this even mean? When do you think these entities lost the “goodwill” of Seattle’s public? Was it after Sound Transit smashed its daily ridership record during the Seahawks parade? Was it after public schools got a massive levy passed in November 2025? Or after the Social Housing Developer got its payroll tax approved in February 2025? Was it after the record-setting Seattle Transportation Levy passed in 2024? Or after the other record-setting Seattle Housing Levy passed in November 2023?
Meanwhile, King County Council is stressed that a Countywide funding measure might fail again, and likely going to try a “Roads & Transit” measure to appease the transit-averse. Seattle alone can’t generate the 1.1 million votes needed to pass a funding measure for Metro.
As usual, you’ve got it all backwards.
Nathan Dickey,
I doubt if you’re going to believe this, but some of us on this board can remember a time before tech owned Seattle and the city wasn’t rolling in money. Things change and voters aren’t likely to rubber stamp every levy that comes along in the future. Then what?
Look at Pierce Transit, Metro, Community Transit and Sound Transit and the bullshit way they’re all tacked together and when a recession hits, what gets cut? Are we really spending 30 billion on subways to Ballard and West Seattle while Metro cuts back on service? These are honest-to-gawd real questions.
I am very curious to see some kind of implementation plan being made ahead of this 2027 full recovery.
A lot things have changed (like Link extension) and probably a third of things that were cut due to pandemic are no longer necessary to be revived and there are new things that emerges for the same reason (Link extension).
As quoted in the article, they’re following the Service Recovery Plan adopted in 2023. The Service Recovery Plan states Metro will “use service restructure projects as the primary means for reshaping service and reinvesting reduced or suspended hours back into the system.”
Metro also has set policies for assessing and addressing service needs on an annual basis, explained in annual System Evaluation Reports (https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/metro/about/data-and-reports/performance-reports).
I’m sure Jack could explain it better, but I doubt Metro is going to produce any further “implementation plan” documents beyond the ones which already exist. There are a few Link and Stride-oriented restructures remaining on Metro’s docket, and they can always kick off a new one if their service guidelines suggest a route is being over- or under-served.
The link in the article is just the Ordinance of passing the plan.
Is there an actual document for the Service Recovery Plan published somewhere?
“If you really believe transit needs to funded partly by the money that comes from the fare box, what happens when the fare box revenue drops?”
The fundamental need is to have a level of transit appropriate to a city of 815K and a metro of 4 million, so that people can get around on it and it’s a default first choice. That’s what cities in other countries have that we don’t, and why we have so much mobility problems. Cities should have good transit infrastructure, just like they should have a good road network, adequate utilities, housing, healthcare, business environment, police and fire protection, clean air and water, etc. These aren’t luxuries; they’re basic requirements for a well-functioning city in the 20th or 21st centuries.
The idea that passengers should pay a point-of-service fee is an abstract ideological concept. There are arguments for and against it. Pugetopolis has long been on the pro-fare side, and probably 90% of the public still is. But how should the rate relate to the agency’s expenses and people’s ability to pay? Should it be a percent of these, and if so, how much? That’s an arbitrary policy issue. The agencies and the King County Council have made their decisions on that.
In the 2010s it was more straightforward. King County’s policy for Metro was fares should bring in 20-30% of operating costs. Whenever it got near the bottom of that window, the county increased the fare 25 cents.
2020 added several complications that threw that out the window. Fares were suspended, capacity capped to 25%, and an “essential trips only” campaign to contain the spread of the disease and retain drivers. The same year, the George Floyd murder brought a spotlight on racial profiling in fare enforcement, the disproportionate impact of high fares and fines on lower-income people and essential workers. So all the agencies added service in equity areas, became reluctant to increase fares, and suspended fare enforcement and later brought back a lite version of it, and expanded low-income discount fares. The state also mandated free youth fares and gave agencies grants to pay for it.
The agencies made all these de facto changes that reduced farebox recovery, but never articulated a new target level or a policy to reconcile it against their expenses. That’s where we are now.
My position is, fares should ideally be free in a perfect city, but Pugetopolis should not pursue it now, not until it has achieved other more important things. Those are:
– Minimum 15-minute frequency full-time until 10pm across all Metro, ST, CT, PT, and ET routes. (Maybe 30 minutes in rural areas: Snoqualmie, Vashon Island, Black Diamond, but not in e.g. Auburn.)
– Coverage gaps filled.
– Reliability: buses should be mostly on-time. Implement with transit-priority lanes and standby buses.
– Benches and shelters at more bus stops, especially transfer points.
– Cleanliness, safety, etc.
I don’t have a specific opinion on what the fare rate should be, or what percent of operating expenses it should cover. It’s probably better to decouple the rate from operating expenses, and instead just charge enough to discourage misbehavior (violence, vandalism, drugs, uncleanliness).
At an absolute minimum, give Admiral and Alki the service that you’ve stolen since the pandemic alone. That’s 5 56 trips and 1 57 trip! And putting peak-only routes at top priority for reductions is absolutely outrageous to me. I’m on the verge of stopping using transit, just like so many other people have. Either give us better bus service or better parking!