Pierce Transit to Adopt Transit Development Plan

On the agenda ^(pdf) of this month's Pierce Transit board meeting is the adoption of the Transit Development Plan (TDP) 2010-2015 ^(pdf). The document itself contains nearly everything a transit nerd may want to know at an overall level about Pierce Transit. It is also quite informative as to describing the problem of funding in these tough economic times.

The interesting thing is that at least in this TDP it doesn't appear that Pierce Transit is acting vigorously on this problem. The problem is understood for sure, but a final sustainable funding plan hasn't been developed yet. For the time being, the present-day service hours are assumed to continue over the next few years. The following chart shows the projected service hours that Pierce Transit is budgeting for the coming years:


However, the financial situation is very worrisome. This amount of service simply can't be sustained for much longer. By the year 2013 Pierce Transit will be well into the red. The following table breaks it down into overall categories of revenues, expenses and capital expenditures.


Tacoma Tomorrow will have some further analysis of a few items presented in this document in future posts.