Thumbs Up on Pierce Transit Service Reductions

Pierce Transit’s proposed Service Reduction Plan (pdf) for October is a shift towards efficiency, economic sustainability, and long-term growth potential.  While service cuts are tough on everyone, Pierce Transit is striving to do the least harm to the general ridership.  Here are the highlights.

Death to Peanut Butter

It’s time to give Pierce Transit a hand on this one.  It takes courage to say “enough is enough” to the ‘peanut butter’ approach to transit service, which hurts urban riders and leads to costs that spiral out of control.  This plan helps the agency to turn the page and set a new course – making long overdue cuts to inefficient routes with low ridership and high costs per rider.  Routing on the Key Peninsula, in Bonney Lake, Orting, and Sumner is discontinued.  The reduction plan at the same time does its best to spare highly used urban routes in Pierce County serving Tacoma, Lakewood, University Place, and Puyallup.

There’s likely to be political fallout from this plan.  One should expect Bonney Lake, Buckley, and Dupont to call for the taxing boundary to be redrawn.  Written public comment is due by today, June 3.  The hearing is on June 13th at 4pm at PT HQ.  More after the jump.

Introducing Peak and Off-Peak Schedules

Pierce Transit has operated for a long while on the same standard half hour service profile using timed transfer centers.  The timed transfers remain for the moment on most routes arriving at transit centers, since Pierce Transit is forced to cut service and connections can only be guaranteed this way.  However, instead of making the cuts across the whole system, midday service is downscaled a bit with a shortening of the evening service span to retain usable service frequency during the day.  At this point in time it is a good exchange, which can be built upon with more service hours.

Network focusing on Key Service Corridors

From a network perspective there’s a lot to love.  Many changes, especially in the North End of Tacoma, greatly improve service and retain neighborhood geographic coverage in novel ways; even though the raw number of service hours are being cut.

 

For example, in addition to serving all previous destinations like the Stadium and Proctor Districts and Point Defiance, Route 11 will now serve Tacoma General Hospital, Jason Lee Middle School, the 6^th Avenue Business District, and the University of Puget Sound.  On top of that, this routing configuration produces a combined service corridor between the Proctor District and 6^th Avenue along Union Avenue with Route 51.  

Another combined service corridor is created between Sprague Avenue and Union Avenue on 6th with Route 1.   This configuration helps to benefit shorter transit trips and inter-district trips with higher service frequency.  In the future, this could position the corner of 6^th and Union to turn into a high profile on-street transfer point.

Further, a reconfigured Route 13 joins its sisters in the Proctor District for a full hub of Routes 11, 13, 16, and 51.  This grants the riders of the Proctor District access to the Old Town/Ruston Way Waterfront, Thea Foss Waterway, and Tacoma Dome Station and accelerates trips made to Downtown Tacoma made from West Tacoma.  Not bad for a 15% service reduction.

Not all Roses for Tacoma

It isn’t all roses, though for Tacoma.  Here are the full route causalities limited to the City:

Route 220 (Orchard St.), Route 59 (Manitou), Route 26 (MLK Jr. Way), Route 61 (NE Tacoma), and Route 603A (Olympia).

Work remains to be done

Something about that service donut doesn't look right.

Despite all that I’ve said, there’s still some remnants of the suburban model should die alongside the other cuts.  Service on S. 224th street to the Mountain Highway Wal-Mart would create a service donut hole bordered by Pacific Avenue, 112th St. and Meridian.  I have told staff to consider shifting those service hours to Route 410, which was programmed to become part of a 15 minute trunk route in Proposition 1.

Next, Route 501, which seems to exist primarily for the purpose of giving residents of Milton (pop. 6786) access to Downtown Tacoma, should be merged with the service hours which link Downtown Tacoma with Federal Way.  This would help to retain comparable service levels to King County Metro's Rapid Ride service to Federal Way Transit Center, while enforcing the Board-encouraged direction of using more direct paths between vital urban centers for fixed route service.

Route 51, in the combination with Route 220, is still missing a vital connection with the Tacoma Mall.  Lots of young people use this route to commute to work each day.  Many of my fellow riders I speak with tell me, "That's the whole point of the 51," and I tend to agree with them.

Finally, I’ve recommended to staff that the following routes be renamed to indicate their new configurations.

Route 11:   Point Defiance via 6th Ave
Route 13:   UPS - Waterfront - T Dome
Route 16:   Proctor District - TCC

In summary

This is a good move for Pierce Transit and with all of the changes to routing and scheduling, in the long run it will be good for greater Tacoma.  It in many ways turns the tables on communities that voted for more efficiency over more revenues during the debate over Proposition 1.  Expect that a redrawing of the Pierce Transit boundary to either start discussion of additional service cuts (amounting to $4m) and/or another ballot measure to seek full funding in 2012.