Looming crisis in transit funding

Without new funding, Metro will be forced to slash 600,000 hours of service.

A new “Transportation 2040” plan calls for the expenditure of $100 billion in the next 30 years on transit in King, Pierce, Snohomish and Kitsap counties. The plan was developed by Puget Sound Regional Council staff, working to shape Metro’s future with a 31-member stakeholder task force.

Of the $100 billion total, $40 billion would go to Sound Transit and $57 billion to bus services in the four counties. Let’s focus on the outlook for buses.

Current taxes and fares will leave the bus transit systems in the four counties $13 billion short of the $57 billion projected for the 30-year plan. So instead of the urgently needed expansion of service, the riding public will confront declining service and rising fares – unless there’s a massive infusion of new funding that’s nowhere in sight.

Without that funding, Metro’s declining revenues and rising costs will force it, by 2015, to slash an estimated 600,000 annual hours of service. That’s no small reduction. It’s one-sixth of the current 3.6 million annual hours of service. In addition, 400,000 hours of expanded service that were promised by 2015 won’t materialize.

The transit funding epidemic is by no means confined to the Puget Sound area. Transit systems facing similarly dire budget outlooks include C-Train in Vancouver, Pierce Transit, Community Transit and Spokane Transit in Washington State; and Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Orange County, Sacramento and Denver in the western U.S.

Bus and train service is especially needed in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue area, where more than 30% of commuters leave their cars at home and go to work by vanpool, carpool, bicycle, ferry, on foot – or by bus.

And for elderly persons, dependable and affordable bus service is precious. It’s a means of running errands, a way to reach the family or the physician, and a ticket to the great world outside the four walls of home.