LAKE STEVENS — Community Transit is expanding its Zip Shuttle program eastward as it continues to look to new ways to bring transit options to outlying Snohomish County.
Beginning Tuesday, Darrington, Lake Stevens and Arlington are all part of a new pilot program for the micro-transit service.
“Those four communities are representative of the Snohomish County Transit benefit area that we serve,” Community Transit CEO Ric Ilgenfritz said. “They give us a really good sample for learning that would inform future decision-making about how we expand the service countywide.”
An app is set to launch Tuesday for locals in the new communities to access Zip. The service allows riders to book a ride, which will pick them up where they are, and take them to their destination.
Rides can also be scheduled via phone by calling 425-521-5600. Rides are $2.50 and accept ORCA cards.
The Zip got its start in Lynnwood around the Alderwood Mall and has found success, Community Transit officials said. So far this year, the agency has reported 63,474 boardings on the Zip shuttle in Alderwood, including 6,713 boardings in November.
Earlier this year, I spent an afternoon at the Lynnwood City Transit Center talking to mass transit passengers.
The second person I spoke with lauded the services of the Zip, telling me it was a game changer for him. It allowed him to get from home to the bus station, which he then took down to Seattle. Light rail service now takes the place of many of those bus routes.
It’s had other uses too — shopping trips, rides to appointments, rides to school. Youth ride free on Community Transit’s offerings, as well.
Jennifer Hass, a senior manager of innovation with Community Transit, said the agency has spent the past 18 months doing outreach in the communities getting Zip.
“They’re just excited to be kind of able to get to the grocery store if they need to, be able to get to the doctor’s office, be able to run an errand because maybe the other household car is used by someone else, so this gives them an option to be able to kind of have a second car,” Hass said.
Community Transit hopes to have its Gold Line bus rapid transit system connected to Smokey Point later this decade. That will make it feasible for someone in Arlington and Marysville to take transit to light rail. Rising industrial businesses in the area have added jobs and more need for transit.
Zip has the potential to fit into a concept transit agencies call “first mile, last mile,” which essentially refers to getting potential transit riders from where they are to larger transit hubs. While the Zip does serve point-to-point purposes and is not on a fixed route, in practice it can also connect people to bus systems and, in Lynnwood, light rail. And it can do so without the cost of services like Uber and Lyft.
Arlington and Darrington also have a significant elderly population in need of additional transit options, as well.
Darrington’s pilot project extends west toward Swede Heaven, north up Highway 530 and northeast up Sauk Prairie Road.
Arlington’s Zip service will extend from downtown to Smokey Point, with Arlington High and Post Middle School near the service area’s borders.
The Lake Stevens program includes its downtown and stretches north to Highway 92 and south to U.S. 2.
The service has a trade off — rides are often not solo. But those shared rides cut down private car trips, serving the agency’s sustainability goals.
Ilgenfritz looks at this a couple ways. Community Transit is experimenting with zero-emission vehicles in its vanpool and lessons from that will likely be applied to the Zip program. If the pilot program is successful, it could open the door for people being able to rely more heavily on transit and less on personal vehicles.
“If this model works for folks, then it becomes a financially or economically sustainable choice for those folks and and and that’s a big public benefit that we’d be providing,” he said.
The pilot project will last 12 to 18 months, during which Community Transit will gather feedback on the service with the goal of enhancing it.
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated that riders in the new cities could use the “GOIN’ – Rides for All” app to access the Zip service.
Jordan Hansen: 425-339-3046; jordan.hansen@heraldnet.com; X: @jordyhansen.
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