Down the right road

Published 12:01 am Sunday, June 5, 2011

This week, Community Transit is opening up a dialogue about the future of public transportation in Snohomish County.

The worst of the recession is hopefully behind us. But the lingering impacts of the economic downturn will continue to affect us as workers, employers, businesses and service p

roviders for years.

Because of high unemployment and low consumer confidence, there has been a huge drop in sales activity in the county the past four years. Community Transit’s sales-tax-based revenue — our primary funding source — fell about 18 percent during this time and remains at that

level.

We have come to accept that this is the “new economic reality” and we are no longer relying on a return to previous income levels anytime soon.

To ensure our sustainability long into the future, Community Transit plans to reduce its service by 20 percent next February. At the direction of our Board of Directors, we have come up with three alternative ways to get us there. You can view them at www.communitytransit.org/2012changes.

2012 service alternatives

Each of these alternatives continues to serve all the communities in Snohomish County we now serve, although some areas could see reduced service.

In each scenario we would shut down our operating base two hours earlier, which means the last buses on the road will be heading back to base around 11 p.m. Last year, we moved the start of our day 90 minutes later and that affected Boeing employees, since much of that service started very early in the morning. Boeing riders won’t be impacted by this new nighttime cut, but other riders will. The fact of the matter is that fewer people ride our system in the early morning or late night hours compared with the rest of the day.

We will continue to operate our buses on Saturdays, although service those days will be reduced. When we suspended Sunday service last year, ridership was taken into account. Ridership on Sundays was about one-fifth what it is on the typical weekday, and shutting down an entire day saved a great deal of money. Saturday ridership is higher than it was on Sundays, but still nowhere near our weekday ridership.

In one of the three alternatives, we propose to bring back a minimal level of Sunday service. Just opening our base on this day costs a lot of money, so to pay for that service there are deeper cuts on Saturdays and weekday afternoons.

Long-range vision

Excluding the reduction in service, all of our proposals take us closer to the objectives set out in our Long Range Transit Plan. This is a document we prepared over the past two years in cooperation with the county, the tribes and every city in Snohomish County. It takes a 20-year approach to envisioning the transportation needs of our county and the role public transportation plays.

We have not given up on our vision, but the recession has slowed our progress.

Between now and 2030, there will be more and more demand for trips along the county’s key high-traffic corridors like Highway 99, Highway 9, U.S. 2, 164th and others. For our part, Community Transit aims to provide high-frequency bus service on those roads so people will have a fast and reliable alternative to driving themselves. Our Swift bus rapid transit line that started in 2009 on Highway 99 is the model for that type of service. Swift buses arrive every 10 minutes and stop at only a handful of stations along the route. By incorporating offboard fare payment and three doors for people to board, the bus is at the station for only seconds and quickly continues on its way.

Swift served nearly 1 million passengers last year — about one-tenth of our total ridership — and was more productive than any other local route. People can easily transfer from Swift to Everett Transit, King County Metro Transit or other Community Transit service to get them where they need to go.

The long-range plan also envisions more investment in local service to create better options for people staying in the county and feeder service to regional transit connections.

Rather than encouraging people to drive their own vehicles to park & ride lots to catch commuter buses to the University of Washington or downtown Seattle, we would encourage them to take more frequent local buses to those connection points. Eventually, this is how Community Transit will connect to the Link light rail system when it gets to Lynnwood and Everett. In the more immediate future, there may be more local bus service in the peak hours with riders transferring to their commuter routes (see Alternative III).

Nearly 70 percent of our riders take the bus during the two peak periods of the day. Both our short-term and long-range plans seek to increase the efficiency of our system, and maximizing our service to meet this demand is a key.

This month, Community Transit will be hosting community open house meetings to discuss the three service alternatives and get public input. By August or September, our Board of Directors will vote on a final service plan that will take effect in February.

This new service plan will be the basis on which our system will grow to achieve our long-range objectives. How quickly we grow will largely depend on the economy, but it will also be up to state and federal budgets.

At the state level, Rep. Marko Liias of Edmonds this year sponsored a bill to provide temporary, emergency funding for our agency. The congestion relief fee was passed, but excluded Community Transit!

Meanwhile, Gov. Chris Gregoire has called for a Transportation Advisory Group to develop a 10-year state transportation funding plan. This group must understand that public transportation helps people get out of their cars, which reduces the need for more investment in roads. The recession made it clear that funding transit through sales taxes creates a cycle where transit funding disappears when it is needed most — when people are out of work and cannot afford to drive.

We look forward to engaging our state and federal elected officials in this dialogue about the future of public transportation, since they too are part of the solution.

About the author
Joyce Eleanor has been chief executive officer of Community Transit, Snohomish County’s public transportation provider, since 1994.