Speak Now, Or Forever Miss Your Bus: King County Metro Schedules Public Hearings About Proposed Cuts
As nearly anyone who depends on Seattle's mass transit system will tell you, King County Metro is a flawed, but generally satisfactory service. Sure, there are major issues at play (regularly late/unreliable schedules, sometimes missing buses, often cumbersome to get from point A to point B), but with the help of services like One Bus Away, Metro lives up to its current less-than-ambitious motto: "We'll get you there", which is true, as long as you're not running on a tight schedule.
Like every other state run organization, however, Metro has been hit hard by the recession and currently faces a $60 million shortfall in its annual budget. In order to deal with the deficit, King County has two choices: Either institute a $20 "congestion reduction charge" on all vehicles in the county, or drastically reduce Metro's service. According to Metro, this reduction would take the system "back to 1996 levels of service."
To give you an idea of what this will look like, Metro has provided a list of bus lines that will be cut, altered or reduced should this proposal come to pass and it's pretty brutal. The 43, for example, would be cut, and it is unclear exactly how people would get from downtown to Montlake. The 26 and 28 bus lines would go, leaving only their express routes, which means either fewer stops along Dexter heading to/from Fremont, or the buses would no longer function as "express routes" anymore. The 2, 14, 66, are all gone, service to Lake City becomes dicier, these are but a few of the proposed alterations; the changes listed will have an effect on 80% of bus riders throughout the region.
The end result will be more crowded buses, which will arrive less frequently (woe to the person who misses the bus and has to wait 30 minutes or more for the next one, which happens often enough as it is), and will leave entire patches of town out of the reach of service.
The $20 per vehicle in King County alternative, an idea championed by Dow Constantine, sounds reasonable enough--the fee seems modest in comparison to the amount of service we'd be receiving in return, and may do what it intends to do, which is persuade more folks to ride the bus. Either way, Metro will be holding a series of public hearings throughout King County during the month of July in order to discuss the proposed cuts or fee.
It remains to be seen if the public and the rest of the County Council will agree that the congestion reduction fee is a necessary measure; but we'd be willing to wager that those who'd argue against it own a car and don't use Metro.
King County Metro's Public Hearings on the Proposed Cuts will take place as follows: Wednesday July 6th, at 6:00p.m. // Kirkland City Council Chambers, 123 Fifth Avenue; Tuesday July 12th, at 6:00p.m. // King County Council Chambers, 516 Third Avenue, 10th Floor, Seattle; Thursday July 21st, at 6:00p.m. // Burien City Council Chambers, 400 S.W. 152nd Street
