Community Transit Listens: 2013 Rider Survey

Starting Tuesday, Oct. 15, Community Transit will be administering a system-wide onboard rider survey on local and commuter buses. We conduct these surveys every three years to collect anonymous demographic information about our riders to meet federal requirements, and to learn how riders use our bus service.

Aside from demographic information, the survey asks about the trip you are currently taking. We want to know, in general terms, where you are coming and where you are going to, as well as how you got to your bus (walk, car, bike, etc) and how you will get to your destination after leaving the bus.

There are also a few questions asking your opinion about the service.

This is the first onboard survey we’ve done since our bus network restructuring in February 2012, so these answers will help us to figure out how rider habits may have changed, and how riders are using the system.

The survey takes about 3-4 minutes to complete. Surveyors will be on local buses (100s and 200s and Swift) Tuesday through Saturday handing out and collecting the surveys. These surveyors are temporary workers and will be wearing appropriate ID.

The survey will also be available on commuter routes to UW and downtown Seattle on Wednesday. On those buses, riders will fill out the surveys and place them in return folders near exit doors when completed. Riders can also take the survey home and send it via mail postage-paid. Riders are encouraged to take the survey each time they ride the bus.

Help us reach our goal of 10,000 completed surveys by the end of the week. Thanks for your participation!

Seattle Ride Free Area Going Away

King County Metro Transit has decided to eliminate the downtown ride free area on Sept. 29. The decision was really made by the King County Council as a concession to approve the two-year $20 car tab fee.

Either way, there are a few impacts for Community Transit riders.

Commuters who board Community Transit buses in downtown Seattle will pay on entry, which is how they pay everywhere else. This also means that riders must board at the front doors.

Having an ORCA card will make boarding faster; so far the vast majority of Community Transit's commuter riders have ORCA cards.

Lynnwood-bound riders who board north county Routes 421, 422 or 425 will need to let the driver know they are only going to Lynnwood before paying fare. This allows the driver to change the farebox from the default north county fare. Currently, this is done at the Lynnwood Transit Center as people deboard.

The upside to this change is that when commuters get to their destination they can just hop off the bus from any door! Also, there shouldn't be a lot of "free riders" taking their seats in downtown Seattle. Community Transit does not have a local fare in King County, so anyone boarding a bus downtown will have to pay a commuter fare.

The downside could be confusion the first few days after the change. There may also be longer waits for buses downtown as people take longer to board.

For information on how people can get around downtown, visit Metro's website.

Oct. 1 Service Changes

As happens twice a year, Community Transit's schedules will change on Monday, Oct. 1.

Planners have continued tweaking schedules after the massive February service network restructuring. They have looked to close layover gaps (when buses are stopped between trips) and add running time to some routes that have had trouble keeping on schedule. Because of this, many routes will see trip times changed a couple minutes earlier or later. Check the online schedule or Bus Plus books.

There also are a couple of routing changes being made that reflect either customer preference or things that really didn't work out. A few changes are being made this fall, while others have been proposed for Feb. 2013.

Routes 105 and 115 will no longer drive into the McCollum Park Park & Ride. Low ridership for these routes at that location, coupled with the time it takes to pull into and out of that lot make this a good change to improve on-time performance. Those riders wishing to travel along Bothell-Everett Highway can still catch Route 106, or they can simply catch Routes 105 or 115 along 128th Street.

Route 240 took extra time to travel north past the Stillaguamish Senior Center to serve three low-ridership stops. Now the route will end at the senior center. Those northern stops will continue to be served by Route 220, and are within short walking distance for people who don't want to wait for a connecting bus. Again, this change will save time to help keep Route 240 on schedule.

Route 280 was rerouted in Lake Stevens when a traffic roundabout project was under construction. After it was completed, it turned out that buses couldn't make the turns. So, the reroute up Hwy 9 to Lundeen Parkway is becoming permanent.

The other change this fall, elimination of the downtown Seattle Ride Free Area, is subject of another blog post.

The Curious Case of Dump the Pump 2012

June 21 is National Dump the Pump Day, a rallying cry for transit agencies and advocates to use high gas prices as a way to get non-transit riders to consider taking the bus, train, ferry, etc.

The American Public Transportation Association conceived this day seven years ago and the catchy title, supported by grassroots activities across the country has helped to garner media attention every year. It is a great hook, especially since gas prices tend to rise at the beginning of summer.

Dump the Pump 2012 has presented some interesting concerns. While gas prices spiked earlier this spring, they have really gone down over the past 6-8 weeks. Even in the Northwest, where refinery problems kept the price of gas well above the national average, the last 1-2 weeks has seen a dramatic drop.

The region's transit agencies - those that participate in ORCA plus Intercity Transit in Olympia - rewrote our joint news release several times because of those dropping gas prices. There are some regional calculations in that release, and each time we revised the "current" price of a gallon of gas, those calculations had to be redone.

For Community Transit, our biggest concern over promoting Dump the Pump Day was that our commuter routes are pretty full. Since our latest round of service cuts in February, there are not a lot of empty seats on our peak-hour buses. We didn't want to make a loud call to non-transit users to try transit for this one day only to have them stand the entire ride and not want to come back. Nor did we want to create an even more crowded commute for our loyal riders who have stood with us in these trying times. (The image above is from Dump the Pump 2009.)

So, Community Transit is using Dump the Pump Day to get people to think of their favorite "Summer Destinations" that they can get to on transit. We have a Destinations page on our website with information about bus service to some of the more popular places to go in Snohomish County. We also want to know where frequent or infrequent riders get to on our buses.

Chances are your favorite destination is not work, so we don't think this promotes more riders for those peak-hour trips. But even during our busiest times, not all buses are packed.

Where do you like to take the bus during the summer? What are some trips you didn't think were possible, but have found you can make on our buses?

Post-Service Change Adjustments

The February 2012 service change was massive in scope not just because it reduced our bus service by 20 percent, but also because the local service network was redesigned. With such a huge change in the system, it was inevitable that some adjustments would be needed.

A couple weeks ago, the agency made adjustments to the Route 113 schedule to improve connections between buses and ferries in Mukilteo. It took several weeks to design a change that didn’t carry too many impacts down the line, then get the change out to drivers and customers.

On April 9, several other adjustments will take place.

Route 196 afternoon and evening buses between Edmonds and Alderwood will start five minutes later to help get trips on schedule. Behind-the-scenes, some driver work will change as part of this adjustment. Our hope is that these changes will help this new route stay on schedule on trips that have been notoriously behind schedule since the new route started in February.

In Bothell, Route 435 will hold at Canyon Park for up to five minutes in the morning to allow for incoming Route 105/106 and 120 buses to make that connection to downtown Seattle. This means customers already on board will have to wait a bit longer, but this is a connection that was supposed to happen and has been hit-and-miss in reality.

On Route 120, an early afternoon adjustment in how drivers switch off will help to keep more trips on schedule. This is an example of making changes in off-service work that positively affects the in-service experience.

When these changes go into effect next week, 82 weekday trips and 31 Saturday trips will have been adjusted since the Feb. 20 service change.

Our Planning and Transportation staff continue to monitor other trips and routes to see where improvements can be made to the massive February service change. It’s likely there may be more adjustments coming in June and September.

The challenge is to allow enough time for drivers and customers to adjust to the initial changes, then track schedules over a period of time long enough to tell us that late trips or missed connections are truly a systemic problem, not something that changes from day to day.

Without money for new service hours, the next step is to find ways to adjust driver work or make minor tweaks to the schedule that can improve the customer experience. And, of course, the laws of transit dictate that every action has an unintended consequence; when you start tweaking schedules you start impacting the travel of those who have found a way to make the system work for them. We want to keep those downstream impacts to a minimum.

As more adjustments are made, we’ll discuss them here, and send out announcements through rider alerts. Sign up for our electronic alerts if you haven’t already.

Route 196 Schedule Adjustments

By Tom Pearce, Public Information Specialist

Since the February service change, we’ve been listening to customers and tracking service to see where things haven’t quite worked out. With that in mind, starting Monday, April 9, there will be changes to the Route 196 schedule.

On that date, all Route 196 trips in both directions that start after 2:40 p.m. will begin five minutes later. This adjustment, combined with a change to the way drivers’ work is configured, will help keep these buses on schedule the rest of the day.

The new Route 196 schedules will be posted at each stop by Monday, April 9. Meanwhile, the new schedules have already been posted online and are loaded into our Trip Planner so trips can be planned for after April 9.

Route 196 is a new route offering all-day half-hour service between the Alderwood mall area and Edmonds waterfront. The route is averaging more than 500 riders a day, which is very good for a new route. So far, this route has suffered from late trips in the afternoon and a lack of stops around the Lynnwood Civic Center/Lynnwood Transit Center area. We continue to work with Lynnwood officials on the bus stop issue.

Service Change - Bus Stop Locations

The service change that took place yesterday was in the works for nearly a year. That's the time it took to get guidance from our Board (once we knew how much money we needed to save), develop three alternative scenarios, present them to the public and gather feedback, go through the Board decision process, then fully schedule the final service plan, train drivers, produce signage and information materials and start the new service.

It is near the tail end of that process, after we have fully scheduled the service plan, that we reach out to cities and the county to talk about where we want to locate new bus stops. Each jurisdiction has a separate bureaucracy for dealing with such requests, with their own criteria and timelines.

What we submit are requests based on what we feel is the best place for riders to catch a particular bus. This year, our route shuffling was designed to eliminate loops and deviations - in other words, make the routes as direct as possible to save time and money. Most requests are granted, but not always; sometimes we are given alternatives to consider, and sometimes flatly denied.

Sometimes the process goes beyond the time frame in which we need to produce Bus Plus, maps and other public information.

Just last week, we were granted permission to put two new temporary stops on Marine Drive outside the Warm Beach Senior Community near Stanwood. The timing on that decision was close! We are still awaiting decisions from the City of Lynnwood on stop requests for Routes 112 and 196 near the Lynnwood Transit Center. Obviously, the new service has already started, so the omission of those stops is glaring. We are forwarding comments from our customers to the city, but it is their decision to make. The service still works without those stops, but it may not be as convenient for some customers.

We can add stops at any time during the year, not just at a service change. With the vast number of changes that took place this week, there are bound to be some tweaks here or there. Most tweaking will happen when we publish new schedules on Oct. 1, but if stop requests are granted before then, we could make some changes sooner.

Service Changes on Monday, Feb. 20

Next Monday, Community Transit bus service will change significantly.

For local riders in Snohomish County, there are major changes to the route network, as well as schedules. Several routes have been eliminated and others serve different destinations. Peak hour schedules (5:30-8:30 a.m. and 3:30-6 p.m.) will be largely the same, but off-peak schedules will have fewer trips, especially away from the urban areas. On Saturdays, buses will run less frequently than they have throughout the county.

Also, the latest any buses will operate is between 10-11 p.m.

For commute riders to downtown Seattle, several routes have been eliminated but most other routes remain the same, with fewer trips. Expect more riders on the remaining buses. Based on current ridership numbers, there should be seats for every rider if people store their belongings on their laps or beneath seats. Some trips may experience standing loads, especially in the afternoon when more people try to take the same bus back to Snohomish County.

Routes to UW are largely unchanged, except for some trip times.

If you have not planned your trip for next week (and maybe considered a Plan B), pick up a copy of the Bus Plus schedule book on buses or use the online Trip Planner. All new route schedules are available online, along with stop lists to tell you where the bus stops along each route.

While Monday is Presidents Day, there will not be a holiday schedule. All buses will run according to the new regular schedule. The Customer Information line (425 353-7433) will be open that day from 6:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Community Transit employees will be at various locations to help people with their trips on Feb. 20 and 21.

Community Transit is reducing service because of low revenues due to the economy. The agency is pursuing new funding options during the State Legislative session.

Transit Leaders Decry Federal Funding Bill

Leaders of six Puget Sound region transit agencies today spoke out against a U.S. House bill that would eliminate the Mass Transit Account portion of federal highway funds, instead putting the transit money into a general fund account. The bill automatically reduces the size of the transit funds and lumps it in with other "alternative transportation" funding modes. Plus, the funding would not be guaranteed, as it has been for the past 30 years.

"We have been pushing our state and federal leaders for increased funding to preserve and restore service. H.R. 7 goes in the opposite direction, reducing transit funding and, very importantly, putting the only federal money we could rely upon in jeopardy," said Community Transit's Acting CEO Todd Morrow.

Community Transit received about $10 million, or about nine percent of its operating budget in 2011 from the federal Mass Transit Account. Nearly half of that helps support operations. If that support were to go away, or even be made uncertain, Community Transit would need to fill that funding hole with its local sales tax revenue, which could mean more service cuts, possibly as much as 9 percent of the service left after Feb. 20.

On that day, the latest service cuts due to economic shortfalls will be implemented. All together, Community Transit will be operating 37 percent less bus service than it did two years ago. Further cuts in federal funding, as proposed under H.R. 7, could add more cuts to service and jobs.

H.R. 7 passed out of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee last week and is still under consideration by the full House.

Trip Planner Has Feb. 20 Info

Community Transit's online Trip Planner has been updated with the 2012 service change information, making it possible to plan a bus trip for Feb. 20 or later.

This is the latest in our series of information milestones surrounding the Feb. 20 service change.

Bus Plus books have arrived and will be placed on buses beginning this afternoon. They will likely be a hot commodity. If you find your bus has run out, let the driver know.

We are asking riders to take only one book to help save on printing costs. Reduced print runs, promoted through the "Reduce, Re-use, Re-read" tag on the books, has saved more than $100,000 over the past two years.

Reality Check - Changes Coming!

Community Transit staff have been out at park & rides and on board buses reminding riders that a major service change will take place on Feb. 20. Many people are aware of this, and many have gone online or read the Guide to Service Change to see how their travel will be impacted. But there are still quite a few people out there who think these changes are negotiable and may not realize they are going to happen, soon!

To date, we have spoken to more than 1,700 riders about the upcoming service change. We get that number by adding the number of conversations we've had to the number of people on buses that we hop on and make an announcement. In some cases, we may have a five- or 10-minute conversation with someone waiting for their bus; in others there is a 25-second announcement that the changes are coming Feb. 20 and all the details are in the Guide to Service Change and on our website.

Given that we have about 40,000 boardings a day on our buses, that comes down to just south of 20,000 actual daily riders. We hope to speak to maybe 3-4,000 in person before the service change, and those people may talk to others. Through this blog, our electronic alerts (13,000+ subscribers), our website and our Facebook page, we hope the word is getting out to more. And, of course, everyone who rides the bus has a chance to see the materials on board.

But again, not everyone pays attention or realizes the urgency. Even on these pages we see commentors suggesting alternatives to the changes. It's always great to get feedback, but the public comment period for these changes took place last summer; these changes are final.

Maybe that fact will sink in when the printed Bus Plus schedule books arrive on buses later this week.

The changes are not perfect. Service cuts never make people happy. But nearly everyone should be able to still use our service with some adjustments. And we'll be making adjustments later this year. If a connection just is not working out, or trip times need to change, we can do that. For now, we are trying to make people aware that changes are coming, soon.

We'll be out by the Albertson's in Mukilteo, at the Ash Way Park & Ride and the Lynnwood Transit Center this week, and at Mariner Park & Ride, Boeing and Everett Station next week. What question will you be asking?

Van GO - Filling the Niches of Transportation Demand

By Tom Pearce, Public Information Specialist

As a community service, the Van GO program is like a reward to local non-profits that serve Snohomish County residents – the chance at a cost-free vehicle. As a transportation service, Van GO helps to fulfill community travel needs that could not be replicated by regular transit service.

At a time when regular transit service is being cut, Van GO may mean even more. That’s how the program was born in 2000, when the state cut MVET funding to transit agencies and Community Transit cut its bus service by 30 percent, including all weekend service. The agency sought board permission to grant a portion of its surplus vehicles rather than sell them all at auction. Vehicles bought with only local funding are awarded; those purchased with state or federal money are auctioned.

A surplus vanpool van generally nets about $2,300 at auction. For a transit agency, that money might translate into one bus on one route for one day. To a non-profit organization, the chance of getting such a vehicle without charge is worth much more. In exchange, organizations must promise to use the vehicle for specific community needs and must estimate the number of rides they will provide in a competitive application. Those organizations that show they can meet a great need are selected to receive the vans.

This year, 10 local non-profits received eight-passenger vans with about 150,000 miles on them.

They are: Cocoon House East (Monroe), Everett Gospel Mission, Kid’s Place Early Learning Center (pictured above - Darrington), Lake Stevens Senior Center, Northwest Baptist Church (Marysville), Holly House (Edmonds), Snohomish Community Food Bank, Work Opportunities (Lynnwood), Village Community Services (Arlington) and Youth Dynamics (Arlington).

Once a vehicle is granted to a group, they are responsible for it, including all maintenance and insurance. Grantees provide reports to Community Transit about the usage and rides provided for the first year, although the vans generally remain in service for many years. The 106 vehicles granted over the program’s 12 years have provided tens of thousands of rides that our buses typically wouldn’t serve.

This year’s program reminds us of the origins of Van GO. We’re preparing for a major service cut in February. These vehicles help to make up for some of the service reductions. It’s just another way we’re working to meet Snohomish County’s transportation needs.

New Schedules Online

The new bus schedules effective Feb. 20 are now online at the Community Transit website.

This is the piece of information many riders have been waiting for since the Board of Directions made a service change decision last September. With the schedules, riders will be able to see what times their bus will run, and how their transit connections might work once service has changed on Feb. 20.

Meanwhile, integrating the new schedule information with our online Trip Planner is a more complicated project, so you cannot yet plan a trip for Feb. 20 using that tool. That update will be complete in early February. That trip planning tool is the same one our customer information staff use, so until early February they will not be able to plan complex trips for after the service change.

In early February, Bus Plus schedule books will also be available on buses. Those books contain the print version of the schedules that you can now get online.

Last week, more detailed service change route information was made available online and on buses, and now schedules are available. Later this week, staff will begin an outreach effort to make sure riders are aware of the upcoming changes and answer questions. Community Transit staff will be at the Canyon Park Park & Ride this Thursday during the afternoon commute hours, then they will be at Edmonds Community College on Jan. 18 and Everett Station the morning of Jan. 19, weather permitting.

Riders with web access can get information easily through the Community Transit website. Discussions about the service change are going on here on the blog and on our Facebook page. Specific questions can always be sent to riders @ commtrans.org or asked via phone at (425) 353-7433 (RIDE).

February 2012 Route Information is Online

We are now several days into the new year and more details are available about the upcoming Feb. 20 service change. This is one of the largest service changes in our agency’s history—every route will be affected, although the commuter service to the University District will see only minor schedule changes.

In all, nine routes are being eliminated, 20 routes have changes to their routing and 29 routes will have fewer trips scheduled. There also will be two new routes, one in south county along 196th between Edmonds and Alderwood, and one in north county taking over the eastern portion of Route 240 between Smokey Point and Arlington.

The information now online is the same information that is in the Guide to Service Change that is going on buses this week. That booklet provides comprehensive information about the routing changes, trip reductions or frequency reductions, and tips for connections for each route. There are also maps for each route that has routing changes, and area maps to show how the service will connect in various geographic areas.

What the Guide to Service Change does not have are the specific schedules or bus stop lists for each route. Those will be available online soon, and the Bus Plus schedule books will be on buses at the beginning of February.

Here is an example of what information is in the Guide and online now:

Route 113: Mukilteo–Ash Way Park & Ride
Routing Changes - Map (shown above):
• Revised route ends at Ash Way Park & Ride instead of Lynnwood Transit Center.
• No service south of 164th Street.
Weekday Schedule: Daytime frequency reduced from every 20 minutes to every 30 minutes.
Saturday Service: Frequency reduced from every 30 minutes to every hour.
Connecting Routes: Swift, Routes 101, 112, 115, 116, 119, 201, 202, 413, 415, 417, 810, 860, 880, 885, 511, 532, Everett Transit, Sounder, Washington State Ferries.
Route 113 Rider Tips:
• Routes 112 and 113 will connect at Ash Way Park & Ride instead of Lynnwood.
• For service to Alderwood mall or Lynnwood Transit Center, passengers can transfer at 164th Street & 35th Ave. or Ash Way Park & Ride to Routes 115, 116, 201 or 202, all of which have frequent service.

The map shows the new routing, along with what section has been deleted. The rider tips explain that riders wanting to get to Alderwood, Lynnwood Transit Center or the Lynnwood Civic Center can transfer to specific buses to get there.

What riders will discover as they begin to use the newly designed service is that Route 113 now connects to the Ash Way Park & Ride, which has connections all over the county and to Seattle so there are new opportunities. It will take some getting used to, but our planners, faced with the financial reality of cutting 20 percent of our service, redesigned many routes to shorten trips, connect to other service and open up new opportunities.

Because some riders will need to transfer when they didn’t need to before, it is even more important for people to get an ORCA card if they don’t have one. With ORCA, your fare is transferred to any other trip you take in the next two hours.

In the coming days, and for the next two months, we’ll have more information here and on the website about the Feb. 20 service change.

When Your CEO is your Talent: Delivering the Service Change Message

By Karen Johnson, Video & Design Supervisor

“Joyce, please do that line over again and pause after the word ‘customers.’”

The talent, Joyce Eleanor, is our CEO. The video team - two of her employees from Customer Relation’s Marketing Division - create the concept, draft the script, produce, direct and edit the production, and then post it to the website. The topic is the upcoming February 2012 Service Change.

Joyce is a passionate and effective communicator. As the face of our agency, she speaks from her heart. Her message is authentic because she’s talking about the agency she leads, and the employees - her employees - who have lost their jobs. She has listened to the riders who are deeply impacted by the service cuts. Any other spokesperson would be unacceptable.

Producing a video to deliver information about service changes is just one way we use video on our website as a tool for our customers. We have also developed How to Ride videos in several languages for our customers, as well as another to become familiar with Swift bus rapid transit. Community Transit riders and civic leaders also contributed their own video storytelling testimonials in their own words.

Community Transit’s training division uses our videos during employee orientation to acquaint new staff with policies and agency culture. Plans for 2012 include instructional video shorts – brief, simple videos that demonstrate how to use our Trip Planner, how to use Swift, and a variety of other useful services. We recently created an online Video Gallery that contains all the videos we’ve produced.

Videos provide the opportunity for broad messaging in a timely manner to our many audiences.
And because we produce the videos entirely in-house, we are able to be responsive and accurate, at no cost to the agency other than staff resources.

“Cut! Great job, Joyce. But I need you to do that line one more time.”

Swift Celebrates Second Birthday

It was two years ago this week that Community Transit, in partnership with Everett Transit, launched Swift bus rapid transit. When it opened, Swift had 12 stops in each direction along a 17-mile stretch of Highway 99 between Everett and Shoreline. There are now 14 stops in each direction, as four stops were added in the City of Everett earlier this year.

In October 2011, Swift had an average of 4,500 passengers ride each weekday. That totaled more than 107,000 passengers for the month – the highest ridership month so far. To put that in perspective, that means in October one out of every 7.7 weekday passengers on Community Transit was riding Swift. On Saturdays, that percentage was even greater as one out of every 4.7 riders was on Swift!

Riders know that Swift is a unique experience, but operationally, Swift stands out among our routes. It is the most frequent service in our system, with a bus arriving every 10 minutes from 6 a.m. – 7 p.m. Swift also has the most service hours of any of our routes, as the service runs from 5 a.m. to midnight, with more buses per hour during that long day. Of course, Swift is also the only route in our system that has off-board fare payment, which helps speed up the boarding process, frees up the drivers to focus on driving and requires fare checkers, known as Swift Ambassadors.

Swift is also the only route in our system that receives specific grant funding. State and federal grants combine to pay for a majority of the operating costs through 2013.

Swift also has been a victim of Community Transit’s service cuts. In June 2010, Swift lost Sunday service, just like the rest of our bus routes. In February 2012, Swift frequencies will be cut back to every 12 minutes on weekdays. To most riders this may not make a big difference, but from an operational perspective, this means big cost savings. There will be one fewer bus going in each direction each hour, saving the cost of a bus driver, the cost of fuel, and the cost of maintenance and depreciation on vehicles that will travel fewer miles because of this reduction.

Finally, what would a Swift birthday be without some poetry from rider Margaret Elwood?

----------------
Our favorite bus just turned two!
Dear Swift, Happy Birthday to you!
It's undeniable:
Fast, clean, reliable-
That's how your ridership grew.

----------------
At the end of your second year
Here's a rhyme to wish you good cheer.
Swift bus, you're a treasure.
Your service-a pleasure!
I'm glad every time you appear.

"Minor" Holiday Service

For transit agencies, figuring out how much service to put on the road on holidays is a guessing game. In good times, you might err on the side of providing more service and risk having empty buses. In frugal times, you might constrict service to the point that it inconveniences some riders.

Well, these are frugal times and many riders have been inconvenienced by the fact that Community Transit no longer operates on six “major” holidays: New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

The rationale for cutting service on those days, along with Sundays, was that those holidays are more universally observed and transit demand was much lower. Plus, drivers were paid premium pay to drive on those low ridership days, making that service very expensive to operate.

Community Transit still operates on four “minor” holidays: Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Presidents Day, Veterans Day and Thanksgiving Friday. These are days when some businesses are closed and transit demand is lower than a typical weekday, but there are still a significant number of people riding the bus.

On these minor holidays, Community Transit usually runs a regular local service schedule. Even if people aren’t working those days, they still travel to do shopping, run errands or visit family.

On these days we reduce commuter service to downtown Seattle and the University District based on expected demand. For instance, this Friday, Nov. 11 is Veterans Day. History tells us that few people change their work schedules and demand for commuter service that day remains high, so we’re running a regular schedule on all service that day. However, on Thanksgiving Friday, Nov. 25, we will operate only Route 414 with extra trips into downtown Seattle and only Route 855 to the University District. Past experience has shown that few people (about 20 percent) take our buses to Seattle on “Black Friday.”

As we prepare to cut service a second time in three years, it is a coincidence that our first day of the new service change is Presidents Day, Feb. 20, 2012. We might have run a reduced commuter schedule, but because our service will be reduced from what we operate now, we have decided to run a regular schedule that day. We’ll see how that goes.

Do you, or did you ever ride the bus on holidays?

Board Adopts Hybrid Alternative for 2012

The Community Transit Board of Directors this afternoon selected the so-called "Hybrid Alternative" as the service plan for the agency's 2012 System Change.

The Hybrid Alternative combines the commuter route network proposed in Alternative I with the local route network proposed in Alternative III, with some modifications to each. The Hybrid Alternative does not include Sunday service.

Community Transit will reduce bus service by 20 percent in February 2012 due to low sales tax revenue as a result of the recession. A public outreach period this summer generated more than 2,000 public comments about the original three alternatives for service reductions, plus the hybrid alternative that was added in early August.

Board members were divided over the service plan, with Snohomish County Councilmember Dave Gossett, Lynnwood Councilmember Ted Hikel, Mountlake Terrace Mayor Jerry Smith, Snohomish County Councilmember Dave Somers, Mill Creek Mayor Mike Todd and Stanwood Mayor Dianne White voting for the hybrid alternative, and Mukilteo Mayor Joe Marine, Marysville Mayor Jon Nehring and Gold Bar City Councilmember Steve Slawson voting against the hybrid alternative.

Although several board members said their first choice was another of the alternatives, no motion was made for a vote on any but the hybrid alternative.

In coming months, schedules and maps for the new service plan will be created. An extensive public outreach effort will take place early in 2012 to help riders get familiar with the new routing and schedules. The new service plan will take effect on Monday, Feb. 20, 2012.

Sales Tax Revenues Not Recovering

Once upon a time, the economy of Snohomish County was growing along with our population and employment. Sales tax looked like a stable and growing source of revenue. That was a good thing for Community Transit, since sales tax has historically made up 60-70 percent of our budget.

In 2006 we began working on our six-year Transit Development Plan for 2008-2013, and we had all sorts of hopes for the future of public transportation in Snohomish County. Our financial forecasts anticipated a slight slow-down in sales tax growth by the end of the plan, but an average growth of 6.9 percent a year seemed reasonable in Washington’s economy at the time.

Then, along came the Great Recession. Our Transit Development Plan had estimated sales tax collections of $103 million in 2011. We’re now hoping for $62.7 million in sales tax revenue this year, 18 percent less than we collected in 2007 and 40 percent less than we expected to collect before the recession hit.

The recession is supposed to be over now, and revenues are up 2 percent compared to 2010. However, about 2/3 of the increased sales tax is the result of a tax amnesty program by the state Department of Revenue. Adjusting for one-time effects, sales tax revenue is less than 1 percent higher than in 2010.

A report from the Department of Revenue last month indicated taxable retail sales overall in Snohomish County were down by 1.7 percent in the first quarter of 2011 – worst in the state.

While it looks like sales tax collections will be sufficient to balance our budget this year, our future is still uncertain. Major service cuts in 2012 are part of our long term sustainability plan. Earlier this year we had assumed a more favorable economic recovery and projected an average sales tax growth of 4 percent for the next 6 years. The fact that the economy is recovering so slowly could mean the need for more cost cutting in 2012, including the possibility of additional service cuts in the future.

Same Alternatives, New Mix for 2012 Changes

Just as the Hybrid Alternative (see previous post) is a mixture of existing proposals to reduce service, our revised "2012 System Changes" web page provides new ways to view existing information. Both the Hybrid and the web page have some differences compared to the originals which we hope are improvements.

New information now posted on the system change pages includes: