Changes in the Draft Alternatives

Pierce Transit is now at a new phase in their System Redesign process where there are new alternative plans out for comment. We covered the first release of the draft alternatives in a bunch of posts. In summary, Pierce Transit is facing an alarming shortfall in revenues while costs are still increasing.

There were three concepts when the process began - one assuming current revenues, another assuming an increase of 0.3% in sales tax and another assuming even more revenue in addition to that. This time around, there are just two alternative: "Reductions" and "Growth".


The biggest difference between the two drafts in the "Reductions" alternative is that the total service hours increased 33%. The previous "Current Funding Concept" had 265,000 service hours per year, whereas the current "Reductions" alternative has 353,000. Pierce Transit spokesman Lars Erickson describes the reason for this change:

By far, the majority of the increase comes from identifying the impact of SHUTTLE paratransit reductions- in terms of geographic coverage and scheduling. We’re estimating that 15% of current SHUTTLE trips will no longer be in the ADA defined ¾ mile from a local fixed route and some SHUTTLE trips will be lost due to the reduced span of service. As you may be aware, the average one-way cost of a SHUTTLE trip is over $38.00 ...

The other major factor is staffing. Because we developed schedules, we also now have a better idea of the number of operators and other staff that would be needed in a reduction scenario.

Likely because of this increase, the number of routes in the "Reductions" alternative has increased from 23 to 40. However, all but the three trunk routes (Routes 1, 2 and 3) will have hourly service with a few routes having half-hourly service during the peaks and a few other routes having no weekend service.

In the "Growth" scenario, things look rosier. There is a focus on increasing the frequency of the existing routes (both trunk and local). Also in the new scenario a few additional changes are put in place for the communities toward the edge of the Pierce Transit service area. A number of routes that are cut in the South Hill, Bonney Lake and Buckley areas would be revived. Also, new bus plus service would be created for DuPont and a peak hour bus between Sumner and Orting would be created as well.