- Bonney Lake
- Buckley
- Orting
- Steilacoom
- DuPont
Most of these cities have good reason to investigate the possibility of seceding since they are all proposed to have very lousy if any transit service at all in certain drafts of PT Tomorrow. After all, if the sales tax revenue in their districts doesn't net any benefit and subsidizes the transit service of other areas why wouldn't they secede? Below I'll break it down into what each of these cities has today for transit service and what is proposed in PT Tomorrow.
Bonney Lake
Out of the five cities, Bonney Lake generates the most sales tax revenue with nearly $2 million per year. Today, 4 bus routes cross through Bonney Lake at some point. These are the 406, 407, 408 and 496. Each of these routes are among the lowest in ridership throughout the Pierce Transit system. However, as covered before, it could be that these routes don't connect enough places for them to be appealing.
Except for the peak-only route 496, the headways on each of the routes is an inconvenient hour to two hours with no Saturday or Sunday service on the 406 and 407. And to top that all off, the total cost (according to the 2010 TDP) of each of these routes totals about $1,200,000 or roughly 63% of the total sales tax revenue that Bonney Lake generates. And that is even without factoring in that the 406 also serves Buckley and that the 408 mainly serves Sumner.
In PT Tomorrow, it gets worse in all scenarios. In the current funding concept, the 406, 407 and 408 are all eliminated leaving only the 496. Thus, only peak hour service to meet the Sounder would remain from Bonney Lake Park and Ride. In the New Funding concept, the 406 is still eliminated while the 407 and 408 are combined to make for a headway of an hour. The 496 remains unchanged.
Buckley
Today Buckley has one route, the 406. As discussed earlier in the Bonney Lake section, the route has a headway of about 2 hours and doesn't run on weekends. The city collects $261,243 a year in sales tax revenue and the route costs $180,700 to operate. However, the route also goes through parts of Bonney Lake, so the cost is shared to some extent.
In PT Tomorrow, service is removed to Buckley altogether in both the Current Funding and New Funding scenarios. The nearest bus service would be about 6 miles away.
Orting
Orting currently has no fixed-route service whatsoever. Pierce Transit does offer the Orting Loop which is a dial-a-ride van service that operates Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays from 8am-8pm to and from South Hill Mall. However, Orting actually collects more money than Buckley netting $285,964 per year.
In both the Current Funding and New Funding scenarios, Orting will continue to have no fixed-route service.
Steilacoom
Steilacoom has one route that goes into its city limits and another that terminates at the nearby Pierce College at Fort Steilacoom. The 212 is the route that goes to Steilacoom, but on a bunch of trips it will terminate at Pierce College without entering Steilacoom. The 214 always terminates at Pierce College. Both of these routes are fairly convenient with half hour headways and hourly service on the weekends. With this good service it costs about $1 million to operate the 212 and $1.3 million for the 214. Steilacoom only collects about $194,591 in sales tax revenue per year.
Unfortunately for Steilacoom, the 212 would no longer provide service inside the city in the Current Funding and New Funding concepts. It would still serve Pierce College, but at hourly headways. The 214 would similarly be reduced to hourly service in both scenarios. In the Current Funding concept, there wouldn't be any weekend service on either route.
Dupont
Dupont is another city which currently has very little Pierce Transit service. Sound Transit extends some of its 592 trips to/from Dupont only during peak commuter hours. Pierce Transit extends one trip of the 207 per day from Dupont to the Madigan hospital on the base. Dupont brings in $453,472 of sales tax revenue for Pierce Transit.
In the Current Funding and New Funding concepts, not much changes for Dupont. The Current Funding and New Funding scenarios eliminate the 207. However in the New Funding scenario, Bus Plus service is introduced in the Dupont area.
A Quick Word on Caveats to This Analysis
One big factor that I didn't talk much about is Pierce Transit SHUTTLE Service. It isn't clear to me about the geographic distribution of Shuttle service which could have a big pull on the financial analysis done here. If anyone is more enlightened please do comment on what that may be.
Another big item is sales tax revenue collected from Unincorporated Pierce County which as Chris noted previously could be as much as $9 million per year. The geographic distribution of these revenues will have a similar effect on this analysis - especially in the Bonney Lake/Buckley/Orting area where the cities are enclaves within a much larger Unincorporated Pierce County.
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Shuttle service costs $43 a ride and must operate during the operating hours of the service that the fixed route service runs. If more than two rides occur per hour along the entire route, then the cost of service for the corridor doubles - resulting in a 50% relative loss of your possible vehicle headways. The impact is less for shorter, more frequent routes.
ReplyDeleteI've seen the map for Shuttle riders - it's spread all throughout the County, but PT has to make deadhead trips out to the eastern part of the county when making a lot of Shuttle trips, so it costs a lot of money.
Add to that the per passenger subsidy for the eastern county is already extremely high.
One thing that I noticed, was that none of the politicians that were quoted expressed how important it is to find a new funding source. I can't imagine that each little city would be able to run their own little bus system. If they did, where would they go? The smaller your town, the more important it is to be able to connect to the larger employment bases out of town.
ReplyDeleteNo offense to Orting, but the reason why the Orting Loop isn't popular has to be that all it does is loop around Orting. If youre in Orting, I have to imagine that the main reason to hop on a bus is to leave Orting, not ride around in circles. Of course, most circular transit rides don't get used in any city. The most linear transit route is almost always the most used route as well.
The TNT seems to be pointing fingers (or bus driving as they say, right over PT), without doing any real in depth analysis. Seems like they already made up their minds that a sales tax hike is a bad idea.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thenewstribune.com/2010/04/20/1155296/pierce-transit-an-agency-in-trouble.html
You're right, there isn't any analysis in the editorial. A 0.1% or 0.2% tax increase would mean service cuts with more taxes. It doesn't make any sense. How could an agency seriously sell a ballot measure like that?
ReplyDeleteThe PI or the Times would have had at least some recommendations for how to restructure the system - something to provoke some thought. Instead, the TNT seems to be pandering to the suburbs as they are ought to do. It's sad but true.
Personally, I'd willingly pay more for straighter routes, and more frequent service. Throw in an substantial extension of T-Link, and also the MLK streetcar into the plan and PT would have a tangible service to sell to the public.
ReplyDeletePaying more for less (unless it's a bikini on a supermodel) is never popular.