Tag: Pierce County

This post is the fifth and final in a series, adapted from an article I wrote for my blog, Transportation Matters, a Pacific Northwest-flavored blog that discusses railway planning, urban planning, and related politics.

The previous post described four proposals for improvements to Pierce Transit. This article proposes three improvements corridors to conclude the series:

• Make Targeted Bus Corridor Improvements
• Implement New Buslines that Connect More Local Centers
• Electrify the Core Local Buslines

Make Targeted Bus Corridor Improvements

Pierce Transit should exclusively seek corridor infrastructure improvements that are relatively straightforward, standardized, and affordable. Basic improvements—from queue jumps and bus shelters to bus bulbs and (near) level boarding—would do much to enhance existing bus lines. These incremental upgrades may be able to leverage funds obtained from an increase in the sales tax, via the issuance of long-term bonds, with their expense amortized over a several year period. Transportation benefit districts like those available in Tacoma could also support some improvements.

For transit, what Tacoma and Pierce County need more than anything else is rubber on the road: more service, more frequency, more options for getting around. Discussing major infrastructure improvements is pointless if there is no intention to run a frequent service. Even Pierce Transit’s $325-million (or more) Pacific Avenue project, featuring major rapid transit elements like median lanes and stations, would have seen peak frequencies of only 10 minutes. While that is a huge improvement over recent 30-minute headways for the Route 1—which was frankly unacceptable given the line’s importance and the claimed necessity of its conversion to BRT—it pales in comparison to BRT facilities like Van Ness in San Francisco. There, buses arrive every several seconds throughout the day. In Seattle and Vancouver, B.C., indeed in cities around the world, 10-minute frequencies are commonplace without extensive infrastructure upgrades. Just run more buses.

Continue reading “Better Transit in Pierce County: Corridor Improvements”

This post is the fourth in a series, adapted from an article I wrote for my blog, Transportation Matters, a Pacific Northwest-flavored blog that discusses railway planning, urban planning, and related politics.

The previous post described three proposed improvements to bus transit in Tacoma. This article proposes four improvements for Pierce Transit:

• Secure a Sales Tax Increase for Pierce Transit
• Increase More Busline Frequencies to 15 minutes or Better
• Invest in a Pierce County Bus Transit Grid
• Expand the Pierce Transit Service Area into Greater Pierce County

Secure a Sales Tax Increase for Pierce Transit

For significantly improved local transit service, Pierce Transit should seek a modest sales tax increase. This would secure several million dollars of additional annual revenue for transit operations, facility improvements and maintenance. A plan for how the money would be collected and spent should be given to voters sooner rather than later. Those plans should prioritize better frequency of the most productive buslines, superior connections on the service grid, and incremental reliability improvements over so-called BRT upgrades and expansions of coverage.

Today, Pierce Transit is supported by a 0.6 percent sales tax. Its voter-approved limit is 0.9 percent, which allows the agency to seek a sales tax increase of 0.3 percent, or an additional $0.03 per $10 purchase. For a large urban area with a dominant city of metropolitan importance, the current rate of support is low compared to our peers. As subarea transit expert Chris Karnes notes, Pierce Transit “is funded at half the rate [of King County Metro] in a county with a smaller tax base, with no supplemental funding from the City of Tacoma”. Community Transit, an agency serving a distributed suburban population like that found in Pierce County, also benefits from a 1.2 percent sales tax rate. This discrepancy should be reduced or eliminated. Pierce Transit needs to grow and there is excess financial capacity to do so.

Continue reading “Better Transit in Pierce County: Pierce Transit”

Tacoma Tomorrow has generated a graph for PT ridership in January 2010 similar to the one we did for Metro. Check it out.

Pierce Transit, to observe their 30th anniversary of emerging from Tacoma Transit, is launching a PT Tomorrow campaign, which is being billed as a potential total redesign of the route system.

There are basically no details about what kind of changes, but that may be because the first step is to gather public comment about the current system and what’s missing from it.   A series of public meetings will run from October 6 to November 12, where PT invites you to comment on the following:

Prioritizing service. The economic recession has shown us that we can’t always have everything.

Where you’d like to see improvements and least like to see reductions. Destinations? Time of day? Frequency? This is your opportunity.

Regional connections. Travel beyond Pierce County is important to a growing number of transit riders.

Of course, you can also comment electronically. This input will lead to a plan  in April 2010.

Pierce Transit is in an unusually good position, given that their sales tax is only at 0.6%.  That means a 50% tax revenue increase is available given local political will.