EVERETT — Community Transit foresees its bus service growing by 40 percent during the next six years.
To keep pace over that time, the transit agency expects to hire 200 more workers, mostly drivers and mechanics. That’s about 25 percent more employees than work for the agency now.
“As the county grows, we want people to know they can rely on transit to get them to their jobs, school, appointments and social activity,” Community Transit CEO Emmett Heath said in a news release.
The predictions are part of a draft transportation development plan the agency unveiled last week. Modest changes are set to begin March 27 with 15 new weekday trips on existing routes.
Proposition 1, which passed last fall, will usher in more. The ballot measure increased sales tax by 0.3 percent in CT’s service area, which includes most of Snohomish County, with the exceptions of Everett and parts of the Highway 9 corridor. The new tax is to take effect April 1.
The current period of growth represents a turnaround from cuts during the recession. Community Transit suspended Sunday service for five years, but restored it last year. Relief on busy commuter routes isn’t expected until the fall of 2017.
“The big restraint right now is that it’s going to require more buses,” Community Transit spokesman Martin Munguia said.
It takes about 18 months to order new buses, Munguia said.
A second rapid-transit bus line, Swift II, is expected to debut in fall 2018. It will run between Bothell’s Canyon Park and the Boeing Co. plant in Everett.
Community Transit operated 235 buses in 2015 and now employs more than 600 people.
Find more info on trip times at www.communitytransit.org/March2016Changes.
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