Electric Vehicles Can Charge Up at Mountlake Terrace Transit Center

Last Saturday, May 5, Community Transit and the City of Mountlake Terrace held an event at the Mountlake Terrace Transit Center to unveil 10 new electric vehicle charging stations. The charging stations were installed by the city thanks to a federal stimulus grant to help complete a goal of creating a network of charging stations along the I-5 corridor. U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen was there to help commemorate the event.

The 10 stations can charge up to 20 electric vehicles at a time. The city charges a fee for the electricity, now 85 cents an hour. At the event, several electric cars were there to get charged up, including a red Tesla roadster electric sports car.

The event was also used to announce that the transit center has received a Green Globes “One Globes” certification by the Green Building Initiative (GBI). This is similar to LEED certification for buildings. It means the Mountlake Terrace Transit Center was built with sustainable principles that create a low impact on the environment, reduce energy consumption and reduce overall maintenance costs.

The transit center was built with concrete using recycled materials, includes a daylighted stream as part of its stormwater runoff filtration system, has 30 solar panels that feed into the regional power grid and uses low-energy lighting in the parking garage.

The transit center earned a One Globes certification out of a possible four globes. The Mountlake Terrace Transit Center is believed to be one of the first non-occupied buildings in the world to be recognized for sustainable construction.

"How Do I... ?" Watch and Learn.

by Karen Johnson, Design/Video Supervisor

Riders call us with lots of good questions.

“How do I catch a Swift bus?”
“What are my options for getting to Alderwood?”
“How do I load my bike on a bus?”

To provide another resource for our customers, Community Transit is creating Instructional Video Shorts for our website. These videos are about two minutes or less, and you'll be able to find them on our YouTube channel, in our Video Gallery and on topic-specific pages.

Video Shorts are easy to watch, with step-by-step instructions. Our first video short, “How to Use Our Trip Planner,” will show you how easy it is to plan your trip. Other topics you’ll find in the coming months include:

- ORCA
- How to Use Swift
- How to Buy Swift Tickets
- Riding The Double Tall
- Reading Schedules and Maps
- Bikes on Buses
- Transit Instruction Program

Our Customer Information Services division helps select the subject matter for our Instructional Video Shorts based on the questions they hear from riders. And the CIS staff is always available with personalized help for customers at (425) 353-RIDE (7433).

We’re always interested in more ways to help our customers. What are your ideas?
Can you suggest a topic that we should consider for our next quick instructional video?

Watch the video

New Cabela's Store Could Boost Transit Revenues

The central element of Community Transit's financial woes the past five years has been the reduced level of sales tax revenue in our service district. It's not rocket science -- when the economy sours and people lose their jobs or fear for losing their jobs, they hold onto to their money and put off purchases, especially big-ticket items like homes, cars, boats, etc. The items that people do keep buying, groceries and food, are exempt from sales tax or generate little tax revenue.

So it's good news when a new major retailer opens in the district, as Cabela's will be doing with its Tulalip store on April 19. Quil Ceda Village, with its Seattle Premium Outlet mall, Tulalip Resort Casino and big boxes like Home Depot and Walmart, has been a strong economic force during the recession. The opening of a large store like Cabela's can help stimulate the economic recovery in Snohomish County.

Customers can also get to Cabela's, and other Quil Ceda destinations, on Community Transit. Route 222 goes through Quil Ceda Village and has its northernmost stop between the casino and outlet mall. Riders can connect with Route 222 in Marysville at State & 88th from Routes 201/202, which serve Smokey Point, Everett and Lynnwood, or plan their trips online.

Our Buy Local for Transit campaign encourages residents to keep their shopping dollars in the county. That, in turn, helps the bottom line for Community Transit as well as local cities and businesses.

State Legislature Adjourns with No Transit Funding Bill

The State Legislature concluded its second special session of the year this morning after approving a supplemental budget and several other bills. Left on the floor was Senate Bill 6582, which would have given authority to counties, and possibly transit agencies, to seek voter approval of a motor vehicle excise tax (MVET) for transportation needs.

The bill existed in many forms throughout the sessions this year. In the end, it would have allowed counties to seek voter approval of an MVET up to 1 percent of a vehicle's value at registration. The county would have had to talk with local cities and transit agencies about how that money would be used. If the county did not seek the funding, the local transit agency could seek approval for up to 0.5 percent of a vehicle's value. That option could have created as much as $15 million a year in new funding for Community Transit, if approved by voters.

Last month, a letter was circulated to legislators urging passage of the bill, signed by all members of the Snohomish County Council as well as regional elected officials and business leaders. Community Transit will continue to push for additional state funding leading up to the next session which begins in January 2013.

For now, Community Transit's new funding will be coming from increased sales tax revenues as the economy recovers. Go Buy Local for Transit!

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.

State Provides Some Transit Funding, Defers Bigger Decision

The State Legislature ended its regular session late last night without reaching a decision on a supplemental operating budget. Technically, they don’t have to since it’s not a budget year, but since the state is some $500 million in the red, it’s better to have a plan where to cut that spending than not. So, Gov. Gregoire is calling legislators into a special session beginning Monday, March 12.

Transit’s biggest funding bill, which would provide counties a local option for motor vehicle excise taxes (MVET) that could go to transit and transportation projects, did not pass despite making it out of a House-Senate conference committee earlier this week. However, Gregoire has indicated that this is one of the issues she would like to see revisited in the special session, so there’s still a chance.

That bill, ESSB 6582, was amended in conference committee to give counties authority to ask voter approval of up to a one percent MVET. The counties would need to work with cities and transit to come up with a plan that benefits all parties. There are many what-ifs in this scenario, but it represents the best chance for substantive funding that could be used to restore some lost transit service.

Stay tuned for more on that bill.

Meanwhile, two other measures did pass that will benefit Community Transit. A “fees” bill that raises several fees like vehicle license plates, driver record abstracts, etc. was approved. Proceeds will primarily benefit the Washington State Ferries, but some money has been set aside for transit agencies. Based on the funding plan, Community Transit would expect to receive about $580,000 this year, and slightly more each of the next two years, pending legislative approval in 2013. Compare that with the $12 million in service we cut last month and you can see it is not a lot in service terms, but we are grateful for any funding we get at this point.

Community Transit also received a $100,000 transportation budget line item (thanks to Rep. Marko Liias) to help fund an alternatives analysis on where a second Swift line should go. This project will help us gather information as a requirement for federal funding for that Swift line. The bigger question there is whether we will be able to get those federal funds to start that project, given the debate over transit funding in Congress.