Closing Pierce Transit's Budget Gap

How can we avoid going back to 1980 service levels?

Pierce Transit's budget is pretty bleak.  If nothing is done, local transit service will likely shrink another 34%, but there are other ways to look at it.  If we can come up with the funds to bridge the agency's budget gap the Pierce Transit Board can reconsider their decision and postpone additional cuts to service indefinitely.  If we can come up with most of the funds, we can buy Pierce Transit time to scramble together additional funding sources and make an assortment of efficiency-based cuts.  If the economy falters and doesn't come up with a single dime more than what's in Pierce Transit's very conservative sales tax projections AND we do nothing, then we will have to cut service the full 34%.

My position, as a member of the Pierce Transit Community Transportation Advisory Group, is that we should aim to bridge the gap or come up with some of the funds to buy us some time to come up with additional funding partners (whoever they may be - at the state or federal level).  For this reason I am coming out in favor of several measures that will seek to bridge the gap.  This is a diverse mixture of roughly $10m in new revenue per year and $3m/yr in efficiency-based cuts.  Not all of it can be raised by the Pierce Transit Board but, but much of it does require Board action to get it started.

Raise Adult fares to $2.50, youth to $1.25  (~$2.0m/yr)

The first element is to raise local bus fares across the board, 50 cents - the same cost as a Sound Transit single county fare, $2.50.  Some will criticize this as a regressive method to save bus service, but it's better than the alternative of no weekend service at all.  Additional changes to the fare structure should be explored, such as charging riders more for late night service.  Additionally, the agency should begin negotiations with Tacoma Community College to create a blanket fare arrangement similar to the UPass, which would raise revenue for Pierce Transit, help boost ridership from community college students, while also providing a tangible benefit to young people.

Focus on Saving Tacoma bus service (~$8m/yr)

Next, Pierce Transit should provide the City of Tacoma with a preliminary analysis of how much service could be provided in a service overlay at various levels of funding and what trips and routes would be the best candidates for saving.  This kind of information will be important if the City of Tacoma and their Transportation Benefit District can play a meaningful role in averting the coming transit crisis.  If a measure could be put to Tacoma's voters for a time-limited vehicle license fee or a 0.1% or 0.2% sales tax, Tacoma residents could be spared service cuts, while we find a long term solution, and the City of Tacoma could have a stronger voice in planning transit in the future.

Efficiency based cuts ($3m/yr)

Finally, Pierce Transit will have to look at pruning routes that have low ridership.  Further, a new analysis of service should begin with the effort of wringing out as much bang that we can get out of existing routing and scheduling.  If we need to convert a local to an express to keep frequency level, we should consider doing that.  Dwell times, redundant stops and fare-related delays must be substantially cut down with a tenacity not yet seen before at Pierce Transit.

Tacoma Link: Want streetcars? Start an LID.

Tacoma Link AA: Almost to the finish line.

At last week's Tacoma City Council study session, we got to see a sneak peek of the materials (PDF) that will be unveiled in some form at the upcoming February 12th Tacoma Link expansion meeting at the Tacoma Dome Station plaza.

What did we learn about the corridors?

We don't have the raw data, but we do have the slides that were presented to Council.  The outcome of additional analysis from Sound Transit consultants gave us a bit more information about the constraints and potential of the six chosen corridors.  However I'm not convinced that we needed to pay consultants to tell us that:

1. G1 - Pacific Highway to Fife, was not going to have viable ridership numbers, or that, 
2. E2 - Downtown Loop was going to be wildly expensive due to engineering challenges, or that,
3. C1 - Eastside was unlikely to be a good candidate for matching funds from a local improvement district, and finally that,
4. D4 - South End via Eastside was simply too long to be constructed with a budget of ~$150m.

Tacoma Link Expansion Alignment B1 - North End Central

The result of the analysis leaves, as it always has, B1 - North End Central (Purple Line) and E1 - North Downtown Central (Orange Line) - extensions to 6th Avenue/Union Ave and Martin Luther King Jr. Way/S. 19th St, respectively.  An alternate message one can glean from this analysis is that perhaps the best extension candidates actually have a whole lot in common.

What is interesting from the presentation though is that in several places Sound Transit seems to now be getting down to how to pay for this thing, indicating that both B1 and E1 are viable candidates to be partially paid for with a local improvement district or LID.  The cost for B1 is slated at $163m, while E1 is slightly lower at $133m.  A B1 alignment could just as easily be curtailed to Alder St. or Pine St. just so we could compare apples to apples at roughly the same cost.

What I now see as a potential outcome of this process is that in response to this new information from Sound Transit, two public LID efforts begin, one for 6th Avenue, and one for Martin Luther King Jr. Way.  If property owners for both LIDs want to move forward and make an investment in transit, both extensions could actually be constructed and it wouldn't matter all that much which one Sound Transit chooses for a preferred alignment at this stage of the game - everybody wins.

So, who wants to start an LID?  If both succeed, we could potentially quadruple the amount of streetcar track in Tacoma.

What should bus riders expect from Olympia? “Not much.”

Yesterday, at an event presented by Downtown on the Go to address transit issues at the state level Rob Johnson, Executive Director of the Transportation Choices Coalition, indicated that transit riders should expect “not much” from Olympia in this session.  

Mr. Johnson was joined by other panelists Brock Howell of Transportation For Washington, Lars Erickson from Pierce Transit, and Tacoma Councilmember and newly reappointed Pierce Transit Board Member - Lauren Walker.

Rob Johnson’s remarks are sobering for transit advocates in Tacoma, who were told just last week by City officials to ‘look to the legislature’ for help because Councilmember Mello indicated that funding from the TBD is for MoMap (bike/ped) buildout.  While I don’t disagree with City officials that lobbying legislators to ensure that a robust transit component is included in the next transportation package, that does nothing to address the looming 34% service cut to Pierce Transit that is planned for Sept. 29th.

Why is the City not taking more action?

Where does City Hall actually stand on transit?

I posed a question to Councilmember Walker why the City hasn’t taken stronger action to address the crisis when Transportation Benefit District authority is available, while Tacoma’s voters have voted for every transit measure presented to them since 2002.  She gave a response that I found puzzling at first.  Councilmember Walker indicated that the City had already used its TBD authority and no longer had any councilmanic authority.  While that statement was true, I spoke with her for a few minutes after the event to ensure that she understood that TBD enabling legislation allows for additional voter-approved authority and that it could be a way to save bus service from further cuts in the City of Tacoma.  I asked her to consider supporting a public hearing at the City level to better understand the impact of cuts to residents and to look at funding options that have been left on the table.  She said that she would think about it.


So there you have it folks.  I’m not sure what’s going on with the City Council.  I’m not sure if Council is uninformed about what they have the ability to do with TBD authority or if they don’t want to stick their necks out because it’s a City Council election year and they think that transit is a losing issue with their constituents.  I have tried to show Council maps of how much support there was for Prop 1 in Tacoma.  I have spoken with them about how it is within their power to see that this does not happen.  I know that they are hearing from constituents about the impact of these cuts - painful, heartbreaking stories of being stranded, with nowhere to turn.  I would have thought that Tacoma’s local government would be more apt to step up to the plate.

What we do now?  Organize.

The best thing we can do now is to gather more people together to speak more loudly so we can be sure that the City Council is hearing us.  For organizing purposes, please "like" the RestoreTransitNow Facebook page, as we'll be using that to get further mobilization messages out.

The next Citizens Forum for the City of Tacoma is on February 12th.  The same day is also Transportation Advocacy Day which involves lobbying down in Olympia for the day.  If you can make either event to advocate for transit, please do.

Tacoma's Bus riders must look to Olympia for relief

The Pierce Transit Bus: An endangered species?

If you ride the bus in Tacoma or Pierce County your life is about to get a whole lot harder.  Yesterday, the Pierce Transit Board approved a resolution calling for a 34% cut to transit service in Pierce County in September 2013.  Why so soon?  The reasoning behind that is couched in federal policy that requires a lot of public process before the cuts actually take place.  There was the option of putting cuts off to February 2014, but it would have entailed a slightly larger amount of cuts at 36%.  Broadly speaking here's the damage report: no weekend or holiday service, reduced midday service, reduced span, longer headways (many routes going to 60 to 90, some to 120 (!) minute service).

Pierce Transit Cutbacks by Route

Click for details about Routes 1-54

Details for Routes 55-501

Tacoma's City Council balks at using TBD Authority for Transit

Derek Young (Gig Harbor) serves on the Pierce Transit Board

If that wasn't bad enough, the Mayor and City Council of the City of Tacoma have forsaken their transit riders and are refusing to support a city funding measure for transit service (!!).  The City of Tacoma just implemented a Transportation Benefit District last year and instituted a councilmanic $20 vehicle license fee.  TBD authority gives the City the ability to put up for a vote up to 0.2% in sales taxes as well as up to an $80 vehicle license fee for transportation and transit projects/operations.  This amount of funding could stall cuts indefinitely or even partially restore transit service within the City.

Most of Tacoma voted heavily in favor of Proposition 1

Tacoma showed high levels of support for Pierce Transit last year and could easily pass a city transit measure with areas like the North End and Central Tacoma.  It is frustrating to the Nth degree to have the City Council be so obstinate and callous towards the needs of its own people (many households with riders make less than $20k/year), while at the same time ceding control of transit policy to anti-tax zealouts in Milton and South Hill.  Council should instead be paying attention to the huge levels of support for transit found throughout the City of Tacoma.

Somehow, both the Pierce Transit Board and the Tacoma City Council are in a frame of mind to think that it's okay to simply cut loose the interests of some of their most vulnerable citizens and to lay them at the mercy of the State Legislature. (?!?!?)  Sadly, we will not follow the same path as our brothers and sisters in King County, who saved Metro with a landslide of popular organization, nor will we even go as far as the City of Bellingham and pass a city measure with a TBD to restore Sunday service.  No, the most that Tacoma's "progressive" politicians will do to confront this coming humanitarian crisis is rattle a tin can in Olympia for relief.

Pierce Transit Advisory Group Formed

In other news, the Pierce Transit Board commissioned the Community Transportation Advisory Group at the same meeting.  Nine candidates (noted here in the agenda) were selected.  Spoiler: I was one of them. Our immediate scope of work will be to primarily advise the Pierce Transit Board in relation to the service reduction.  I look forward to the work, but I wish it had been under different circumstances.