Council requests more bus service
December 3, 2008
By J.B. Wogan
New report could hamper future efforts to add routes
City Council and staff took a step closer to increasing bus service in Sammamish at the Nov. 18 council meeting. But a report issued just before Thanksgiving calls for a new way of allocating bus routes. If its recommendations are adopted, it could become harder to add routes to Sammamish in the future.Councilwoman Kathy Huckabay asked the council to request increased service from King County Metro Transit. The funding for developing cities, such as Sammamish, already existed, but council first had to authorize its city manager, Ben Yazici, to ask for more service.
The council agreed with Huckabay, and Yazici said he would take action in the near future.
“I’m hoping that we’re going to get it,” Huckabay said.
Metro already expanded service to Sammamish once this year. As of Sept. 22, the 269 bus started running once more per hour, bringing it to three runs. The 269 bus runs from 6-9 a.m. and 3:30-7 p.m., traveling between the Issaquah Park-and-Ride and the Overlake Park-and-Ride in Redmond, crossing Sammamish along the way.
Council discussions have revolved around a six-hour gap in the middle of the day when riders cannot take a bus.
Jeff Brauns, senior transportation program engineer for Sammamish, said he and Yazici met with officials from Metro back in March, discussing ways to add public transportation to 228th Avenue and its cross streets. After the completion of Town Center, Metro might build a park-and-ride at the north end of city, Brauns said.
Some time in December, Kevin Desmond, Metro’s general manger, will probably come to Sammamish to discuss the bus service request with Yazici and Brauns.
The council’s request came just as the Municipal League of King County issued a report calling for Metro to retool its allocation of future bus routes across the county.
Specifically, the report called into question the logic of Metro’s policy of increasing the service to the east and south ends of the county, while the western urban area — Seattle and Bellevue in particular — represent the highest demand and need. Furthermore, the report suggested that Metro should supply routes based on demand and need, not by proportioning service to generalized geographic regions such as the south, east and west. The current Metro policy proportions 40 percent of its new service to the east, 40 percent to the south, and 20 percent to the west.
This policy had been developed to attempt to make up for historically underserving those areas. The league says it may have outlived its usefulness.
The league listed several reasons for why it called for Metro to change its new service allocation policy, which would likely result in slowing the rate of increased service in suburban communities — like Sammamish — and hastening the rate of increased service to urban ones:
- Population density in the west is more than double the density in either the south or east.
- The median household income is almost 50 percent less in the west, which makes those residents more dependent on inexpensive public transit, the league argued.
- A higher percentage of the population in the west use public transit than in the east and south.
- The cost of funding routes to the east and south, and subsequently the cost for riding buses in the east and south, is too high, discouraging ridership.
On the other hand, the report also acknowledged that part of the reason for the current bus service structure is that a disproportionate amount of tax revenue flows from the south and east areas.
Brad Meacham, chair of the league, said the report isn’t trying to pit the south and east against the west, nor does it call for depleting resources in places like Sammamish, Issaquah and Redmond. There could be a way to reshuffle existing routes to maintain current levels while achieving higher efficiency, he said.
But the report does suggest that dense urban areas of Seattle need more service, he added.
Huckabay, who is also a representative on the Regional Transit Committee for the Suburban Cities Association, said she was troubled by the report, but did not expect it to affect Sammamish’s current request for more service.
“It’s far enough down the road,” Huckabay said.
She added that she believed Metro would fold the league’s report into a larger discussion some time next year, one that would also address overall budget concerns.
In response to the league’s report, Metro did publish a Nov. 17 letter from Desmond, which acknowledged the dispute over resources in the south and east, but did not rebut or accept the league’s criticisms as valid.
Reporter J.B. Wogan can be reached at 392-6434, ext. 247, or jbwogan@isspress.com.
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