All posts by Nick Sattele

During the pandemic, fares were suspended on a number of transit agencies in Washington State including Metro and Sound Transit for public health reasons. While transit was free for part of 2020, Metro and Sound Transit suspended fare enforcement until Spring 2025 and Fall 2023 respectively.

On Seattle’s buses and trains (and Snohomish’s, Spokane’s, and Vancouver’s BRTs), agencies employ a “Proof of Payment” system. Common in Northern Europe, fares are not enforced by turnstiles or bus drivers but by transit employees who randomly board transit vehicles and check that riders have proof of payment. Turnstiles prevent the possibility of unique fare media (a free bus ticket with a hotel or, as in Seattle, arena ticket) and barrier-less Youth Ride Free. They also save on capital costs associated with fare gates and operational costs by enabling shorter bus dwell times with all door boarding.

One downside of proof of payment systems is that fare enforcement is more complex. In Washington State, most agencies with off-board fare payment also have a fare enforcement program to issue fines or citations to riders who illegally boarded without paying.

This is part three of a three-part series investigating city-funded bus service in Seattle. Part 1 covered the Seattle Transportation Benefit District (STBD) from 2014 to early 2020. Part 2 covered its successor, the Seattle Transit Measure (STM) from 2020 to present. This article looks to the future of the STM and its 2026 renewal.

In April 2027, the Seattle Transit Measure (STM), Seattle’s 0.15% sales tax that funds extra bus service and other transportation priorities, will expire. Seattle (or King County) will need to place a measure on the ballot this fall for voters to approve to maintain or expand existing transit service.

County or City Measure?

Despite putting the breaks on its electrification plans, King County Metro is still facing a structural budget deficit starting in the early 2030s. Without additional funding, maintaining service will not be possible.

To avert that cliff and expand bus service countywide, transit advocates have urged King County Executive Girmay Zahilay to propose a funding measure to voters (sounds a lot like 2014 and 2020). Zahilay was supportive of this on the campaign trail. However, he said funds generated should also go to maintain and upgrade county roads similar to the failed 2007 ‘Roads and Transit’ measure activists campaigned against and a very similar countywide measure that failed in 2014 that directly led to the creation of Seattle’s Transportation Benefit District (now the STM). We reached out to Executive Zahilay and his office declined to comment.

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.

This is part two of a three-part series investigating city-funded bus service in Seattle. Part 1 covered the Seattle Transportation Benefit District (STBD) from 2014 to early 2020. This article covers its successor, named the Seattle Transit Measure (STM) from 2020 to present day.

By early 2020, the STBD had transformed Seattle into a truly transit-accessible city. With Sound Transit’s self-proclaimed ‘exciting period’ of annual light rail expansions approaching quickly, county leaders saw an opportunity to undo the failures of 2014 and provide better bus service to all of King County, not just Seattle.

King County Floats Measure, Pandemic Hits

In February 2020, King County Council unveiled a proposal to utilize King County’s own Transportation Benefit District to levy a countywide 0.2% sales tax increase to fund additional transit.

Unlike the failed 2014 measure, revenues would go exclusively to Metro and focus primarily on service expansion. Seattle’s existing investments would also be funded under the assumption that a county measure would eclipse Seattle’s. Seattle would lose its freedom to dictate service investments, but planning and funding would be re-regionalized, ending years of a ‘pay to play’ system where Seattle experienced higher service levels than Metro could provide on its own.

Unfortunately on February 29, 2020, the first death from COVID-19 in the United States was announced in Washington. Soon after, then-Governor Jay Inslee announced a statewide state of emergency. By March 13, all schools statewide were ordered closed and Metro reported a 45% reduction in ridership.

All signs indicated that a county-wide transit measure was poorly timed and by March 16, County Councilmember Claudia Balducci announced that King County would no longer proceed with a ballot measure to increase bus service.

In 2015, Mayor Ed Murray’s administration unveiled what would become the 2015 Levy to Move Seattle. It included 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 dubbed the “Very Frequent Transit Network”. Using Seattle Transportation Benefit District (STBD) funding, access to that network increased significantly. In 2015, only 25% of Seattle was within walking distance of the Very Frequent Transit Network. By 2020, 70% of the city was.

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.