Keeping your house clean a chore? How about cleaning 1,600 bus stops?

Community Transit has more than 1,600 bus stops along our routes, and all of them need to be kept clean. We have a team of cleaning crusaders, if you will, whose job it is to do just that – clean up our bus stops. And with that many bus stops spread across Snohomish County it is one pretty dirty job.

Coffee cups, candy bar wrappers, chewed pieces of gum, sometimes even graffiti – these are just a few of the things our cleaning crews see on a weekly basis at Community Transit bus stops.

  

Community Transit contracts with local vendors to clean approximately 610 bus stop locations, including 18 park & rides/transit centers, 17 comfort stations (driver restrooms) and 32 Swift stations throughout the county. The busiest routes, including Swift on Highway 99, and routes on the Bothell-Everett Highway and Mukilteo Speedway are serviced twice a week. The stops with less traffic are cleaned once a week. The remaining 900 plus stop locations do not have trash receptacles or shelters that require weekly maintenance.

To our team, cleaning our stops is more than simply emptying garbage cans. Community Transit maintains the stops at a very high level. Our crews wipe and clean shelter screens, sweep bus stop platforms and report any damage. They also power wash when necessary.

Safety and security are top priorities for Community Transit and cleanliness goes hand in hand with those priorities. Proactively maintaining a space like a shelter or bus stop and keeping it clean and useable tells criminals that this is probably not a safe place for them to conduct their business because the space is actively maintained.

In addition to contracted vendors, Community Transit’s in-house maintenance team assists in the upkeep and performs monthly inspections of all of our stops. This same crew will provide special “call outs” if extra cleaning is in order. Special call outs consist of graffiti removal, damage, or other large messes which are all taken care of within 24 hours of being reported.

As a rider, how can you help make sure our transit facilities remain clean and clear of gum, wrappers, garbage and graffiti? If you see any stops on our routes or buses that need attention please contact customer service at (425) 353-RIDE (7433) or riders@commtrans.org.

Here’s to a clean and healthy 2017!