Pierce Transit saving 25,000 service hours for Weekend Service

Service cuts in September may be down to 300,000 service hours.

Monday, at Pierce Transit’s monthly board meeting, staff will be presenting a measure that could save 25,000 service hours from the chopping block when service scheduled to be cut in September.  This is just one example of Pierce Transit working creatively to try to serve the interests of the riders during this period of scarce resources.

Specifically, staff is proposing to delay capital expenditures for replacement bus coaches and eliminating capital improvements in the out years to the maintenance facility.  The savings of both of these actions amount to $19.5 million.  In addition to another ~$5m in the form of anticipated grants - the amended service plan would reduce service cuts from 34% to only a 28% reduction - from 418,000 service hours to roughly 300,000 service hours.

There is some risk inherent in extending the life of vehicles (from 14-16 years) and forgoing various capital measures in favor of service hours.  However, given the current state that local transit is in, helping to temporarily fill a deficit and retain some weekend service is good news for riders.  It is possible that additional funds from the Federal Transit Administration might be available for retaining good state of repair, meaning the long term impact of this shuffling of resources might not be so bad after all. Bottom line is that this change will allow a very limited restoration of weekend service and is a step in the right direction.

I don’t have details on which routes will receive service on the weekend, but we do have information from the resolution fact sheet on the recommended allocation of these services from staff, which is based on riders per hour of the routes.

If you’re interested, here are the details of recommended option for allocation of these service hours from staff:

• Saturday span of service from approximately 8:30 AM  – 6:30 PM.  Service is based on current passenger per hour figures and not all routes will operate on Saturday.  Frequency of service will be between 30 to 90 minutes, depending on demand and will vary by route.
• Sunday span of service from approximately 9:00 AM  – 5:00 PM.  Service is based on current passenger per hour figures and not all routes will operate on Sunday.  Frequency of service will be between 30 to 120 minutes, depending on demand and will vary by route.