After nearly two months of various council deliberations and public commentary, the Seattle Transit Measure is officially heading to voters in this year’s November General Election. This measure proposes to renew funding for boosted transit service in Seattle, first enacted in 2014 (and reduced in 2020) for 10 years.
Mayor Wilson’s proposal in June faced a litany of amendments and emerged from the legislative process relatively unscathed. The adopted amendments largely require additional reporting by SDOT and Metro regarding the impacts of purchased service and other statistics.
The Move All Seattle Sustainably (MASS) Coalition is leading local advocates pushing for expansion of the transit measure, which proposes to increase the current 0.15% sales tax for transit to 0.3%, the maximum allowed under recently adopted state law. The tax increase would take effect in April 2027, if approved by voters this November.
The 0.3% sales tax would fund 280,000 bus trips in Seattle each year for 10 years, 100,000 more bus trips than currently funded. It would also fund 22,000 free ORCA cards for low-income, elderly, and families with young children, maintain support for Seattle’s streetcar lines, fund spot improvements to keep buses moving, and help expedite permits and inspections for Link expansion projects in Seattle.
The Transportation Choices Coalition is running a thank-you campaign if you’d like to send council an email thanking them for listening to transit riders and keeping the full measure intact!
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/thank-seattle-city-council-for-listening-to-transit-riders
Yes, it’s important to celebrate the wins and share appreciation when the City Council listens to advocates!
Too bad Seattle can’t allocate its sales tax contribution to unincorporated county roads towards this transit improvements.
That money could go to transit capital improvements fwiw
What I find interesting is that to maintain current service we would need a 0.23% sales tax, while with this 0.3% levy we get a 55.5% increase in service hours (280,000/180,000) for only a 34.5% increase in tax (0.3/0.223). In other words we get disproportionately more service hours than tax we put in.
Well… what that shows is that we’re focusing on spending the additional 0.15% on service instead of proportionally increasing the budgets of the current STM.
As Nick discussed in his article earlier this year (https://seattletransitblog.com/2026/02/26/seattle-transit-measure-performance-since-passed-2020-to-now/), the 2026 budget for the STM spends about $45M to buy about 180,000 bus hours (about $245 per hour). The 2027 STM budget (if approved) will spend about $96M to buy 280,000 bus hours (about $350 per hour). This is just the reality of transit service costs in Seattle.
SDOT is choosing to cover all the streetcar operations; in the 2014 measure, it was not allowed; in the 2020 measure, the ST2 service contrition had not expired. The SLU line is clearly a poor transit investment. So, proportionally less is available for bus. The streetcar hours are more costly as well, $400 v $250.
I believe this is also partially because we are currently spending down fund balance that accrued during the pandemic as a result of the operator shortage.
Right, which is why a 0.22% sales tax (adding 0.07% to the current 0.15% tax) would not provide additional service.
Seattle voters should feel fortunate that they get to weigh in on these taxes. In Everett, the mayor\ used the argument of Everett having more low-income residents as the reason why the Sound Transit Board of Directors, where she wears her secondary hat, should get Link to Everett. Soon after she won that vote, she started a PR campaign to double Everett’s transit sales taxes by an amount that’s double what Seattle is asking for, but without a vote. That’s because she got a legislator, State Senator Liias, who doesn’t even represent Everett’s residents, to ram through legislation allowing her to bypass the voters, because she (they?) apparently think that she, if like most board members, a non-transit rider, knows better, and she and afraid of a “no” vote that may result from Everett’s residents. It’s straight out of an authoritarian’s playbook. Her reason was that she’s received complaints about “empty buses,” with her solution being adding more of them. Seattle residents, be glad that you get vet your city’s transit proposal and exercise your right to vote!
Yeesh. You should change your handle to “cardriver” with that attitude.
Yeah, buses that run every 30-60 minutes aren’t going to be well-ridden. Franklin is right that significant increases in bus frequencies are needed to make transit a more viable option in Everett.
The Urbanist’s recent article seems to answer many of your concerns: https://www.theurbanist.org/everett-transit-annexation-would-level-up-citys-transit-system-mayor-says/
I think it’s only fair that if Everett is going be an urban center, it should pay the same sales tax rate as the rest of Community Transit’s service area. It’s silly for CT to have to continue to choose between not serving the urban center of SnoCo and serving the parts of the SnoCo that actually pay for its service.
When our Community Transit local bus was cut back to once hourly during Covid, we didn’t use it. Now that it is back to half hourly most of the day, my wife and I use it. And ridership is up across Community Transit. It’s a bit ironic, but running more busses actually results in fewer empty busses.