Seattle recently got accolades for being one of the US cities with significant growth in transit ridership. This mirrors a national trend in which more people rode buses, trains, streetcars and subways last year than at any time since 1956.
A good part of that bump came from Sound Transit. But King County Metro’s bus ridership also grew by 3 percent last year, and it has nearly reached the record levels the agency hit in 2008 before the latest recession drove ridership numbers down.
Yet several Cascadian neighbors, namely Portland and Tacoma, haven’t had that same experience. Portland’s bus ridership remains about 10 percent lower than its pre-recession peak, and Pierce Transit’s ridership has dropped by more than 30 percent.
What’s the difference? Bus cuts.
King County voters will decide on April 22 whether to approve Proposition 1, which would make needed investments to fix local roads and prevent an up to 17 percent cut in bus service. We can see from other places that significantly cutting transit service is one of the quickest ways to turn a region with healthy growth in transit ridership—which takes cars off our roads and allows the region to grow without adding to our pollution and traffic and health burdens—into a region where significant numbers of riders simply give up on transit and get back in their cars.
But first, let’s look at what King County’s experience has been over the last five years.
Original Sightline Institute graphic, available under our Free Use Policy
Ridership fell as the economy went into the tank but began rising again in 2010, which is also around the time that King County Metro was able to add more bus service in the Alaskan Way Viaduct corridor, thanks to temporary state funding designed to offset construction congestion. And guess what? Traffic in that corridor plummeted as people parked their cars and realized they didn’t need them to get around.
That’s also when Metro began operating Rapid Ride service in South King County and the Eastside, with later expansions in the West Seattle, Ballard, and Aurora Avenue corridors. Those investments were made possible by the Transit Now initiative voters passed in 2006, along with federal and state grants. Seattle’s Bridging the Gap initiative has paid for signal and road improvements that allow buses to travel faster and to avoid sitting in traffic.
Those improvements have been crucial, because when people are standing on a bus and noticing that they’re whizzing by a long line of cars stuck in traffic, that’s precisely when they become loyal and grateful customers. The net effect of those investments—even with cost-cutting measures in 2012 that eliminated the Ride Free Zone and some less efficient service—is that more people are finding Metro a convenient and viable alternative to driving than almost ever before.
In Portland, however, it’s a different story. From 2009 to 2012, TriMet had a series of significant bus service cuts. The upshot was that buses came less frequently, connections were easier to miss, and everyone from single moms to downtown employees to elderly riders found themselves waiting at bus stops. Commutes became longer and less convenient, while some night shift workers at hotels or restaurants found they couldn’t get a bus home at all.
So bus ridership took a nosedive and pretty much stayed there. And a city that was once hailed as having one of the best public transportation systems has missed out on the transit ridership boom that the rest of the country has enjoyed.
Original Sightline Institute graphic, available under our Free Use Policy
For an even more dramatic example, just look at Pierce Transit in the Tacoma area. Pierce County voters have rejected two recent ballot measures to raise new revenue. The agency has cut service three times since 2008, including a whopping 35 percent cut in 2011. And here’s what happened to ridership:
Original Sightline Institute graphic, available under our Free Use Policy
In fact, Pierce Transit was used as a case study in this National Research Council 2012 report on the impact of transit cuts nationwide. Among other things, the report found that:
- lower-income service workers had to start taking expensive taxis home because of reduced evening and weekend schedules
- people who work on the Joint Base Lewis-McChord lost internal shuttle service, making it very difficult to access the region’s largest employer using public transportation
- the school system had to spend $100,000 on new school buses because students no longer had workable transit options
- parents had a harder time getting to their children’s schools for meetings
- community events like the Puyallup Fair had to start hiring private operators to provide transportation services
- former riders who had access to cars started using them again, even as gas prices increased
King County Metro is in the same boat as Pierce Transit, suffering from the same massive shortfalls that resulted from a downturn in sales tax revenue after the economy slowed. Until now, the agency has been able to avoid major service cuts by slashing internal costs, looking for efficiencies, spending down reserves, raising fares, and relying on band-aid funding solutions that Olympia was willing to approve.
But there’s nothing left to cut except service, and in a major way. That’s why county officials have formed a local Transportation Benefit District and are asking voters to approve a tenth-of-a-penny sales tax increase and $60 annual vehicle tab fee. If it fails, more of the county’s roads and bridges will fall into disrepair and the agency will proceed with cutting 600,000 hours of bus service.
This would be an almost unfathomable setback, especially now. Previous investments in transit service are paying off in King County, and more riders are finding bus service to be convenient and preferable to driving alone and sitting stuck in traffic. We need only look to Portland and Tacoma’s bus systems to find out how quickly that trend line can change.
Weezy
— “A good part of that bump came from Sound Transit.” Aren’t most Sound Transit riders 1) commuters who used to use Metro routes, 2) sports stadiums patrons, and 3) people using SeaTac Airport once in a while? Are there data suggesting any appreciable amount of Sound Transit’s regular users don’t fall in to those three categories? In terms of commuters, Sound Transit mostly serves people who could have used former Metro routes.
— Not sure why you’re writing disparaging things about TriMet’s performance. Here are some facts:
—
Riders boarded a TriMet bus, MAX train or WES train 99.3 million times in Fiscal Year 2010.
Weekly ridership on buses, MAX and WES has increased for all but one year since 1988.
For more than a decade, ridership has been increasing faster than other indicators of regional growth, including population and automobile vehicle miles traveled.
TriMet carries more people than any other U.S. transit system its size.
http://trimet.org/about/performance.htm
—
TriMet now is increasing service and increasing capital spending without raising taxes, and it doesn’t impose any regressive taxes:
http://www.oregonlive.com/commuting/index.ssf/2014/03/trimets_new_budget_contains_go.html
http://www.opb.org/news/article/new-trimet-budget-promises-improved-service-cuts-to-employee-health-benefits-/
Average weekday transit boardings for Metro and Sound Transit combined are less than 400,000, whereas the figure for TriMet is about 315,000.
The real difference is the taxing Sound Transit and Metro already impose is about $1.3 billion annually, the great bulk of which are regressive taxes, whereas TriMet’s taxing only is about $250 million (a progressive tax where bigger companies pay more).
The real question — at least as far as I’m concerned, and I’m not a fan of regressive taxing so take this opinion for what its worth — is how much should the average family around here be forced to pay in sales taxes and car tab taxes? Right now that figure is nearly $1,000 every year. That’s FAR more regressive taxing for transit than anywhere else in the country. That’s why I’ll vote no on this county ballot measure next month.
Weezy
Can anyone provide a good reason for why Sound Transit and Metro need about three times the tax revenue per weekday passenger compared to TriMet? That discrepancy is terrible, especially in light of how Sound Transit and Metro only impose regressive taxes. The tax hike the county heads will be proposing to the public next month would make that discrepancy even worse.
KyleK
Without auditing your numbers:
Q1: Isn’t the current light rail just all Airport Riders/Stadium Riders/Former Metro users?
I’m not sure what your point is on Airport/Stadium Riders… those are riders. They are not the percentage of total riders that you seem to imagine though. In general, The light rail gets a very large number of choice riders. Choice riders are people who do not consider riding the bus. You can see this in the way they have maintained double digit increases in ridership every year. That trend breaks down after two years in a typical system.
Q2: Why more expensive per current rider? There are two really simple reasons:
1. Sound Transit is currently in the process of building massive capital projects and Tri-Met is not. That investment will lead to a very large increase in ridership and a much lower cost/rider long term.
2. King County alone is much larger than tri-met’s service area. Sound Transit’s service area dwarfs tri-met’s service area.
Regarding regressive taxes for the bus system: I’m all for moving to an income tax based system, Seattle and King County are not able to do that – it happens at the state level where such proposals are currently DOA. The most regressive move we can do is to cut busses that people rely on. Cars are far more expensive to own and operate. Part of the proposal that we’ll vote for on 4/22 also involves expanding the low income fare system and you can get a low income waiver on the Vehicle Licensing Fee.
Weezy
Thanks for the comments, Kyle.
You wrote this: “The light rail gets a very large number of choice riders. Choice riders are people who do not consider riding the bus.” Light rail riders between the airport and downtown don’t have that choice now — Metro eliminated the 193 route. Sound Transit took Metro riders not only on that route, but on the bus routes it runs between downtown and the eastside. Much of Sound Transit’s ridership would be using Metro buses if Metro had not eliminated those routes. You understand that, right?
Also, those “double digit increases” in light rail ridership are no great shakes. The number of Seattle light rail boardings is the smallest by far of any light rail system in terms of both relative tax costs to households in communities with light rail and capital expenditures by light rail system providers. 28,000 average boardings each weekday is not good, compared to the peers such as the ones in the Twin Cities and Pittsburgh that carry about that amount and cost FAR less.
You are mistaken about TriMet, Kyle. It has been building out dozens of miles of new light rail and streetcar lines and stations at that modest taxing level. At the moment it is constructing a huge light rail extension. Here is the beautiful multimodal bridge that is part of it: http://trimet.org/pm/construction/bridge.htm The thing is, TriMet uses good financing practices for all its light rail work, not the bond-based, secured by regressive taxes abusive method Sound Transit uses. You should study how TriMet finances its capital projects — it is FAR superior to the way Sound Transit does it.
You mention the different service area sizes — do you think that is the reason Sound Transit and Metro’s combined taxing needs to be some three times larger per daily boarding than TriMet’s? I don’t.
Also, a more progressive system would not need the addition of an income tax — that is a red herring. Payroll taxes, commercial property sales excise taxes, LID’s and petroleum product taxes could be used to replace sales taxes to make the financing plans more fair and comparable to how financing transit is done elsewhere. Have you ever looked at how it is done elsewhere? Google can be your friend!
Weezy
Kyle writes: “Without auditing your numbers: [ ].”
Well, Kyle, they aren’t my numbers. They are numbers from the bus and train services providers. Feel free to check to make sure they are accurate though. I want to be accurate.
Both Sound Transit and Metro now confiscate about $650 million of regressive tax revenue each year, for a total of $1.3 billion. TriMet confiscates a progressive tax from employers in the three-county Portland metro area, to the tune of about $250 million per year.
– Average weekday boardings of Sound Transit buses and trains: 100,000 —
http://www.soundtransit.org/Documents/pdf/rider_news/ridership/Q4_2013_Service%20Delivery.pdf%20-%20Adobe%20Reader.pdf
– Average weekday boardings of Metro buses: 390,000 —
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Ao4RYEx3kgpodEpYVTYyTHNabWxDT0FocmJHVldvWEE&single=true&gid=1&output=html
– Average weekday boardings of TriMet buses and trains: 318,000
http://trimet.org/pdfs/publications/factsheet.pdf
Sound Transit and Metro combined thus have about 56% more boardings than TriMet, but they confiscate 500% more tax revenue each year. That translates to confiscating over three times the tax revenue per weekday boarding (or confiscating six times the tax revenue per weekday rider, assuming all those riders take two trips per day). Plus, it’s regressive taxing that’s done up here, which is designed to hit those with the least the hardest.
Try explaining those terrible comparisons. It’s just lousy management and excessive regressive taxing, right?
Serena Larkin
Hi, Weezy. We’d appreciate it if you kept your tone less snarky and more respectful of your fellow commenters. The condescending tone really doesn’t help advance the conversation. Thanks.
Wells
Weezy, if your commentary flourishes got less snarky, nunna yer fancy facts n’ figures what you said would get heard much by sum readers anyways. One basic tally of how a transit system works good or not is whether traffic is consequently less chaotic. Seattle’s Metro & Sound Transit fall way behind Tri-Met in that obvious regard. How duz that saying about numbers go? They can be made to look good if you don’t look too close? I still got my handy Metro booklet for laughs. 15 maps inside, all infinitely more confusing than the single Tri-Met regional map and central city closeup. Metro maps read like an integrated circuit board. My favorite is the Link Airport Station-to-terminal map dangerously close to the dark realm of the parking garage frought with peril. The simplest map of the bunch is the regional park-n-ride location map.
yvrlutyens
I look at:
http://trimet.org/pdfs/publications/2013-audited-financial-statements.pdf
and I can’t make it square with your numbers.
This records operating revenue of $152m of which only $112m is actual passenger fare revenue. The extra operating revenue is from transportation agreements that look partially grant based. The other sources of revenue are the payroll tax at $259m, grants at $97m, and capital contributions at $207m. These are all, at source, taxpayer money. So I make tax revenue at around $600m per year and not $250m per year. Total operating expenses were $570m and the rest went to capital spending.
Weezy
All bus and train services providers get grant revenue. Sound Transit and Metro get more grant revenue than TriMet does.
The big difference in the financing plans relates to the taxing practices — focus on that.
That $259 million of tax revenue TriMet confiscates comes from a progressive payroll tax, and it is the only taxing TriMet does. In sharp contrast, the taxing Sound Transit and Metro do is 300% more per weekday boarding. Try explaining that bad fact.
Indeed, you can compare the per weekday boarding taxing for buses and trains here vs. anywhere else in the country and you’ll see the same thing: it’s far worse here, both in absolute terms and in terms of what kinds of taxes the transit services providers use.
It’s just bad management here, right?
Jennifer Langston
Weezy, my understanding is that Metro can’t levy an employee head tax in the cities, only in unincorporated areas. So that wouldn’t bring in enough revenue to make it worth administering.
Jack
Raise fares. The average fare that Metro actually collects now is only about $1.20 per boarding. That is ridiculously low. Metro should do away with monthly passes and free transfers, and charge everyone full fare every time they board a bus. This would generate enough additional revenue to prevent any cuts to service. And it would be far less expensive for low-income people than taking taxies or paying for parking downtown. Win-win for everyone.
Ann Dasch
Jack, your suggestion is terribly regressive. People with low incomes are more likely to need to use two or more buses to reach their destinations.
It is also doubtful that your suggestion would generate the amount of revenue needed. Coke doesn’t charge 24x times the single can price when you buy case of Coca-Cola, because if it did you wouldn’t buy nearly as much of their soda, and you might even switch to Pepsi. If Coke makes more money by discounting bulk purchases, couldn’t the same be true for transit? Without monthly passes, many riders would switch to driving, clogging up roads and lengthening everyone’s commute. And Metro could make LESS money from fares.
Some Federal transit grants require senior and disabled fares to be no more than half the adult peak fare during non-peak. Eliminating the senior/disabled discount would reduce federal grant revenue. And the youth discount is also important since a) households with kids tend to have less disposable income (so are more price sensitive), b) kids often need to be escorted, so multiple tickets are being used, and c) transit may be the only transportation available to provide those kids to educational opportunities.
Right pricing is a challenge for any business. One size doesn’t fit all.
Jack
“… prevent a 17 percent cut in bus service”
This is a lie. Metro has already said that higher-than-predicted sales tax revenues have reduced the worst-case scenario to about a 13 percent or 14 percent cut, not the 17 percent cut the media continues to falsely claim. Why don’t you give your readers accurate information, instead of using these disgraceful scare tactics?
KyleK
“Metro has already said that higher-than-predicted sales tax revenues have reduced the worst-case scenario to about a 13 percent or 14 percent cut”
Jack — do you have a link to support that assertion?
Also: 13% is also too much when need more transit, not less. We’re at all time ridership highs locally (ST + Metro) – why would anyone think cutting service is smart?
Jack
http://www.seattlemet.com/news-and-profiles/publicola/articles/county-leaders-announce-plan-b-if-state-transportation-package-falls-through-november-2013
“Finally, back to those looming cuts. Sales taxes (the main source of Metro’s funding) are rebounding as the economy recovers and people spend more money. That means that the cuts Metro will have to make could be “only” between 450,000 and 500,000 hours a year, as opposed to the 600,000 (or 17 percent) cuts Metro has been announcing. Still, as Metro GM Desmond pointed out, that’s an awful lot of service to eliminate at a time when buses are overflowing and demand for transit service is higher than ever.”
Those cuts will not even be noticed by the great majority of taxpayers in King County. This is pure scare tactics, and it is reprehensible, but expected.
Jeff Dubrule
Link? As of Feb 4th, http://www.kingcounty.gov/transportation/kcdot/Future.aspx says:
“If no new funding becomes available, Metro is planning to cut up to 17 percent of service beginning in fall 2014.”
Even if you’re right, and the economy’s picking back up enough to make Metro not require 17% cuts, I’m sure there’s a good amount of deferred-maintenance to get caught back up on.
Jennifer Langston
The latest figures from King County Metro are between 15 and 17 percent, which is why most people are saying “up to 17 percent.” I don’t know where your 13 to 14 percent figure comes from. But even at the low end of the spectrum, that’s still a significant cut.
Jeff Dubrule
Jack: eliminating free (for 2 hours) transfers would severely limit Metro’s ability to provide a low-frequency network that provides widespread coverage with a high-frequency network that links hubs/corridors. The only routes that survive would be the those that provide one-seat rides to someplace people wanted to go.
You should be looking at the per-trip price, and not the per-boarding price. Does Delta charge you 2x the price because you connected through Atlanta? No.
As for passes, once you count weekends, holidays, vacation, and sick days, you only have ~20 working days a month. The break-even point of a $90 pass (good for a $2.50 fare) is 36 rides, which means, assuming 2 trips/day, you’re only giving people a 25c discount on passes.
Jack
“You should be looking at the per-trip price, and not the per-boarding price.”
Metro only gives its costs in “per boarding” that I am aware of. I don’t see Metro giving any “per trip” costs. And Metro’s OPERATING cost (not including any capital costs) per BOARDING are about $4.50. That means every time you step on a bus, on average, it costs Metro around $4.50. And many, many times people board Metro buses they are paying nothing, because they use a free transfer or monthly pass.
Does Delta charge the same price for flying just to Atlanta, as it does if you fly to Miami or NYC THROUGH Atlanta? This is what Metro does. If you take the #13 from Queen Anne to downtown, that is a $2.50 trip. If you take another bus from downtown to Ballard, that is a $2.50 trip. But, if you started in Queen Anne and transferred to a bus downtown to take you to BAllard, you only pay for one of those trips — you don’t pay for the bus to Ballard, because you got a free transfer to ride the second bus free.
I gurantee you that is not how airlines do it. If you are flying from SEattle to Boston, and you change planes in St. Louis (or wherever), you don’t get to fly the second leg of your trip for free. You don’t just pay the same price you would pay if you were only flying from Seattle to St. Louis. There is no “free transfer” on airlines. If you fly from Seattle to Boston, that will cost you MORE than flying from Seattle to St. Louis.
But, on Metro, taking a bus from Queen Anne to Ballard costs the same as taking a bus from Queen Anne to downtown. And that is just stupid.
Alan Durning
The airline analogy is spurious. By your logic, I should pay less for a nonstop to Washington, DC, from Seattle. But it usually costs less to take more a circuitous route, stopping and changing planes in Chicago or Dallas or Denver. In fact, if I’m willing to put up with two plane-changes, I’ll probably get an even cheaper ticket.
In any event, contained transit systems, like the DC Metro can charge based on the length of the trip rather than a flat or near-flat fare. They know where you got on the subway and where you got off–scan in, scan out. No bus system anywhere does that, because they’re not contained systems. (And many contained transit systems still give you a free transfer to cover the fare of a connecting bus after you come out.)
Transit pricing is a legitimate point of discussion, I believe, but airlines and subway systems — where the ticket seller knows your origin and destination — are irrelevant to bus-based transit systems.
Conrad
My understanding is that metro doesn’t have funding because our brilliant leaders couldn’t pass a transportation package. Somehow they found the money for Bertha though, and a bunch of highway projects we don’t need. As much as I hate to see bus service cut- I’m not voting affirmative. It shouldn’t have to be taxpayers constantly shelling out nickels and dimes because legislators are throwing millions down the rat hole that is the tunnel project. I ride a bike to work anyway.
Alan Durning
Agreed about highway megaprojects, but “our brilliant leaders” lumps together too many people. Non-metro legislators cynically refuse to give metro-area voters authority to impose more-progressive taxes on themselves, such as motor-vehicle excise taxes. The reason they refuse is that they know only metro-area voters are prone to vote “yes” in statewide referendums on state transportation spending packages. They need metro-area “yes” votes to carry their highway-spending plans, and they figure the way they’ll be sure to get those votes is by putting a gun to transit’s head. Metro-area leaders called the bluff and said, “Up yours. We’d rather pay regressive taxes to keep our transit funded than be hostages to your highway dreams.” (I ride a bike to work, too.)
Nancy
Here’s what I keep wondering. Developers are profiting from building apartments at a dizzying pace in many locations in Seattle right now. Yes, we need housing to hopefully bring down horrendous rent prices, but thousands of new residents will soon need transportation, hopefully without getting into single occupant cars. Do developers contribute enough (through taxes, fees, whatever) to building/maintaining our transit infrastructure? Is this a completely naive question?
Alan Durning
They pay property taxes — pretty hefty ones. Raising “impact” fees on them in the city will just push development out into sprawling locations.
Weezy
No, Alan — the King County GMA limits won’t allow really large residential or commercial developments outside the designated urban growth areas. That kind of sprawl can’t happen here.