Seattle Transit

Seattle Transit

Seattle’s current transit capacity is far below what is needed to serve its population. As population increases our current system will fall even farther behind what is needed. But since Seattle doesn’t currently control its transit future, we are unable to grow the system to meet our needs.

I propose that Seattle take control of transit, in corporation with larger entities like Metro and Sound Transit, by directing Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) to include transit planning. SDOT would consider what transit opportunities existed and make proposals to the city council to improve transit. These proposals could include re-purposing roads (e.g. 3rd avenue as bus only), funding increased Metro bus or passenger-ferry service, or building and operating a monorail or trolley.

This proposal doesn’t call out any particular transit solution or funding mechanism. Those will need to come out of study by professional transportation planners and elected officials. All this proposal does is knowledge that the current system can’t work, and create a mechanism for Seattle better meet her needs.

Why Metro Alone Won’t Work
King County is one of the most diverse in the country, ranging from nearly Manhattan densities in downtown and Belltown to rural land in the east (see Table 1). This complicates transit planning due to the equity arrangement: when Metro increases service, 20% of the new service is in the Seattle area and 80% to the rest of the county. This leads to two problems for Seattle: we can only increase the total service to the amount that the whole county is willing to pay for and for every $1 that Seattle increases its tax burden only 67 cents is spent in Seattle.

Every transit line has an ideal amount of service, which depends on many factors, but the single best predictor of how much transit an area needs is the density. Seattle’s density is nearly twice that of Bellevue’s and nearly 10 times the rest of the county. The ideal amount of transit is higher in Seattle than in the rest of the county. But the current funding formula does not give Metro the flexibility of putting the resources where there is demand. In addition Seattle voters have shown a much greater interest in funding transit, but transit proposals need to be watered down to win enough votes outside of Seattle.

So Metro alone can’t provide Seattle with the transit options it needs. Even if the funding levels were changed to represent the population, Metro would still be unable to provide Seattleites the transit options they want and need.


Seattle Bellevue Woodinville King Count King Count minus Seattle
Population (thousand people) 582 117 9 1737 1155
% of population 33 7 0.5 0.8 67
Density (thousand people per sq mile) 6.9 3.8 1.6 0.8 0.6

Table 1 Demographics for King County (for 2006 from the Census Bureau)

Principles of Seattle Transit

My vision is that the city of Seattle work towards a transit system that meets the needs of its citizens. This work is in corporation with other transit agencies, not in competition. The vision would follow certain principals:

• Goal of SDOT is to move goods and people, not vehicles.

• Another goal is to reduce the number of vehicle miles driven in Seattle even as the population grows.

• A third goal is that no one should have to watch full buses drive past. If a line is that popular more resources need to be quickly added. The extra buses will lead to shorter wait times, which may induce greater usage and more full buses.

• A fourth goal is that from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. you should be able to get from any urban village in Seattle to UW and downtown in no more than one hour.

• If transit is getting stuck in auto traffic, then a grade-separated solution should be sought.

• When doing cost-benefit analysis include all costs, including the cost of driving incurred by the driver and pollution.

• If we fund extra service on a Metro route, the fare box on that route is shared as a percentage of funding (i.e. if Seattle pays for 1 bus on a route and King County pays for 4 buses, then Seattle gets a credit of 20% of the fare collected by all buses on that route).

Transit Riders' Union

Here is an interesting article from the Stranger regarding a transit riders' union:

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=433712
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=439163

Drivers Needed

by Erica C. Barnett

Last week's column calling for Metro bus riders to form a transit riders' union prompted a massive, supportive response from an unexpected place—bus drivers.

Metro drivers and customers, I pointed out last week, are natural allies—both have an interest in making the system better. However, given that I also said riding the bus "can seriously suck," I was surprised by the deluge of letters from Metro drivers who wanted to know how they could help. "Metro feels the 'right to ride' is more important than the 'right to ride right,'" one wrote. "Do you have the pleasure of smelling shit, vomit, malt liquor, piss, and Old Spice in your workplace? I don't even have the privilege of stepping off the bus by choice."

Riders, like drivers, aren't demanding that buses be as convenient as driving or as private as taking a taxi. All we want is a bus system that's reliable, safe, and clean—one where we aren't subjected to harassment, aren't forced into confront-ations we didn't ask for, and aren't shoved up against people who smell like shit. A system, in other words, where the rules are actually enforced—and where drivers and passengers are comfortable and safe. But adding security, installing ticketing kiosks, and buying more buses requires funding. A transit riders' union could advocate for that funding.

One of the largest and oldest transit riders' unions in the nation is the Labor/Community Strategy Center's Bus Riders Union in Los Angeles, which formed in 1992 in response to proposals by the L.A. Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) to raise fares and eliminate discount monthly bus passes. The union sued the transit agency in 1996 on behalf of 350,000 riders. To nearly everyone's surprise, they won. The MTA agreed to freeze or lower fares, cut the price of weekly and monthly bus passes, hire additional transit police, and add new buses to its fleet. In 2001, a federal court ruled that the agency had failed to live up to that agreement—spending 90 percent of its money on commuter rail to wealthy suburbs while urban commuters sweated on overcrowded buses—and forced the agency to buy hundreds of new buses to make up the discrepancy.

None of this would have been possible if there hadn't been a strong, independent, and loud riders union pushing for improvements to the system. In Seattle, bus riders have as much of a need in 2007 to improve our system as L.A. riders did in 1992. I'd love to see some smart, organized, ambitious folks get together and make it happen.

King County Metro survey

Chris Arkills has sent me the PDF version of an annual telephone survey which a local survey firm conducts for KCM. It's 2.1 meg and I'll email the file to Transportation Action Group members. In reading over the survey (200 pages, including the questions asked and endless bar and pie charts, they surveyed about 1000 people) it looks like it covers probabaly 75 percent of the questions we had raised in earlier exercised to create a survey.

Read over the file when you get it and let's consider discussing this at the next SWS meeting - Trans. Action Group section.

upcoming SWS main meeting

Chris Arkills, legislative aide for transportation for King County Council member Dow Constantine, will be attending the next main SWS meeting. He will probably want to give some initial comments and then spend time with the transportation action group.