Some of the routes cut in last year s restructure had been proposed for deletion on multiple previou

I sense a good deal of frustration out there with the news of potential cuts to Metro bus routes. We ve covered the issue pretty extensively here on STB, but sometimes it s useful to put it all together in FAQ form.
King County Metro is facing a serious budget shortfall in 2014. This means that they ll need to cut service by 17% to break even. 600,000 service texas travel information guides hours will be cut.   65 routes would be deleted, and 86 would be reduced or revised . All in all, 2/3 of Metro routes would be affected.
Yep, but it was temporary. In 2011 King County passed a $20 congestion reduction charge on all vehicles registered in the county. This bought us $25 million a year as part of the deal that also ended the Ride Free Area, but it will expire in 2014.
Well, they have been.   In 2008 they reduced operating texas travel information guides expenses , gutted the capital fund (which pays for important stuff like running new trolleybus wire, etc.), and increased fares. That bought $30M.  It also arguably  made the system more efficient . Then in 2011, they passed the CRC and got the unions to take a pay cut,  saving tens of millions more .  WSDOT came through with $32M in mitigation money to deal with Viaduct headaches, but  it also runs out in 2014 … two years before texas travel information guides the Viaduct opens. This mitigation money  helps add additional trips  to crowded West Seattle routes.  Riding in from West Seattle will suck even more when it goes away.  All told, Metro has cut $726M from the budget since 2009. There s not much more fat. It s pretty much all bone from here on out. Next step is to stop filling the tires on the buses (I m kidding!). *
Oh, and cutting the fat ain t so easy if you ve ever been to a community meeting where cuts were proposed.  People get angry, they call their Councilmembers, and Metro backs off. Everyone seems to think the fat is in some other  neighborhood.
(All that aside, texas travel information guides Seattle texas travel information guides s a growing city with a healthy economy and a  low unemployment rate . Metro should be increasing service, not cutting it, as Metro s General Manager Kevin Desmond argues  here .)
They ve done it multiple times.  There s only so much blood you can squeeze from a stone. Back in 2006, when peak fares were just $1.50, Metro  predicted  fares would rise just 75 cents by 2016.  As it turns out, peak fares are already at $2.50 and will probably rise again soon.
Those were built by different agencies (Seattle DOT, Sound Transit) with different funding sources. Sound Transit has a diversified funding base, including a Motor Vehicle Excise Tax or MVET (it s marked texas travel information guides RTA look for it when you renew your tabs… or don t) along with a sales tax. That means Sound Transit can weather the recession a bit better.  Also, Sound Transit spends a lot of its money on capital projects like new light rail lines, which (a) can be spread out over more years if necessary, and (b) tend to get cheaper when there s a recession and construction firms are hungry texas travel information guides for work.
That was great! It got us RapidRide and a bunch of other stuff. But because it was a sales tax, it shrunk during texas travel information guides the recession and ended up raising less than projected.  Since those funds were earmarked for RapidRide as the voters approved them, they can t be moved into another bucket to save costs.
Back in 1999, state voters texas travel information guides approved Tim Eyman s I-695, which would have gutted transit funding across the state by eliminating the state s ability to charge an MVET.  I-695 was declared unconstitutional, but then-Governor Locke and the legislature were so scared of being run out of Olympia that they killed the MVET themselves the following year.  That blew a $500M hole in the state transportation budget. Here in King County, Metro lost an estimated $125M over the 2003-4 biennium, which we replaced by increasing the sales tax from 0.6% to 0.8% (and eventually to the legal maximum of 0.9% in 2006 with Transit Now). But there are two problems with a sales tax: it s regressive, texas travel information guides and it s tied to the economy. Once the recession hit in 2008, everyone cut back on spending texas travel information guides and sales tax revenues went in the toilet. It s not just Metro: transit agencies all over the state, including the Washington State Ferries,  haven t really made up for the money they lost after I-695 passed the MVET went away.
Well, we can bring back MVET funding, at least here in King County. The thing about an MVET is that it s progressive and predictable (versus a sales tax, which is regressive and volatile), since it s based on the current value of all the cars in the county.  This would get us back to a healthy mix of tax revenue so that no one source can send the budget into a tailspin. The legislature is in special session right now and  one of the items on the agenda  would allow King County voters to vote on an MVET that would fund 60% transit and 40% roads. That s right: the legislature is debating whether or not to give King County permission to tax ourselves, after taking that right away from us 12 years ago. Bruce  recently noted  that a 1% MVET ($100 on cars worth $10,000) would be sufficient to meet Metro s needs. It wouldn t hurt to call your legislator in support of this initiative.
texas travel information guides Like I said, 40% of the MVET fees would go to roads. But folks like myself texas travel information guides who own a car and ride the bus would pay into it and benefit from it as well.  Finally, it turns out that more transit options actually makes driving easier: by taking cars off the road, there s less traffic for the cars that remain.  A study conducted during Los Angeles 2003 transit strike found that traffic during the strike  increased by 47 percent  on roads where there was a transit alternative.  Transit is a driver s best friend.
*Update 5:50PM : As my colleague Matt Johnson recently texas travel information guides wrote , roughly half the 17% in cuts would come from routes marked as having a high potential for major reduction. In the comments below, readers offer plenty of suggestions as to which routes should get the axe.
Those obligations are on the state (via the Department of Retirement Systems), not the county. DRS sets fixed contribution rates for local agencies which are paid as a percentage of salary. Those amounts are contributed to DRS, which then pays out the pensions after retirement. If the plan is underfunded, the state, not the county, is on the hook to make up the difference.
Labor costs are a relatively nominal piece of the pie, and pension costs aren t a liability but an asset. Pension funds are healthy. The giant sucking sound is coming from your own vicinity, the sucking sound created by the differential pressure between your perceptions and reality.
Fine, then lets pay the guy to get a pro-transit initiative texas travel information guides going. If he s really following texas travel information guides the money, we ll both prove it to the people of the state, and maybe get something useful done. He s good at pushing them.
An MVET is fine, however the problem people had it with back when I-695 passed wasn t so much the tax as the fact that the state s calculations texas travel information guides for what a car was worth was over time much higher than what the actual blue book value of the car was, thus guaranteeing a higher tax for a much longer period of time.
Would someone texas travel information guides please point me to where it is written that the state has fixed the skewed depreciation rate? Until I am sure that the state is using a more reasonable method like Kelly Blue Book, I will vote against my own best interests and vote NO for additional funding for transit.
Wait a minute, this is craziness… Why are Metro's finances in such bad shape to begin with?: Back in 1999, state voters approved Tim Eyman's I-695, which would have gutted transit funding across the state by eliminating the state's ability to charge an MVET. I-695 was declared unconstitutional, but then-Governor Locke and the legislature texas travel information guides were so scared of being run out of Olympia that they killed the MVET themselves the following year. That blew a $500M hole in the state transportation budget.
I-695 would have gutted transit funding across the state. It was declared unconstitutional (this was a good thing). Then the Governor and Legislature decided to get rid of the MVET anyway (this was a bad thing).
Having said that, I disagree strongly with the assessment that there isn t any more fat. There are wholly redundant routes like the 4; routes with very inefficient paths, like the 2S and the 5 (as Bruce recently identified); deviations that aren t worth it, like the 8 from Yesler to Jackson; scheduling inefficiencies, like the 70-series to the U-District; and lots more. Altogether, I d say that there are more Metro routes that need changes at least in Seattle than ones that don t.
When I look at the list of routes that Metro has proposed for deletion, I see a list of some of the most inefficient routes in the county, texas travel information guides and almost nothing that I d truly regret losing. When I look at the list of routes that Metro has proposed for revision, I see a list of some of the routes that are most desperately in need of revision.
At this point, I m honestly at a loss as to how we can improve Metro s network texas travel information guides without the forcing function of a budget cut. I want to take those 600,000 hours and redirect them to provide texas travel information guides 10-minute frequencies on all our key routes, but I just don t see how the current political environment will ever let that happen. I m hoping that someone who s smarter and/or more politically savvy than I am has some ideas, because I m out.
Some of the routes cut in last year s restructure had been proposed for deletion on multiple previous occasions. Looking a little further back, it took several years to get the Council to go through with the restructure that turned texas travel information guides the 20, 135, and 136 into the 120 and 125.
We ve raised a lot of awareness of some of the remaining pathologies in the network; there are other forces texas travel information guides also driving toward reform (such as the Seattle TMP); and I m optimistic that in a year or two there could be another good attempt at the CD/Queen Anne changes that were scuttled this past time. Don t think failure is forever.
I m not saying we should give up. I m wond