[Transit] Metro announcing 4% service cut in fall service change due to staffing shortage

[Doug Trumm]

Hi TRU friends,

Metro just announced a 4% service cut (which include suspending 20 routes,
mostly suburban commuter runs) entirely attribued to the operator and
mechanic shortage apparently. Mike Lindblom got an early look for a Seattle
Times story
<https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/king-county-metro-to-reduce-bus-trips-this-fall-not-enough-drivers/>
but they're doing a virtual press briefing this morning to fill the rest of
us in and take questions. The Urbanist will attend, but I wanted to flag so
we can start thinking about an advocacy response. Also if a TRU member
wants to submit a quote for The Urbanist story that would be most welcome.
Email me or call 320.237.4771.

Here's the Seattle Times story in case you don't have access:


*Short on drivers, King County Metro to reduce bus trips in fall*
King County Metro Transit proposes to suspend 20 low-ridership bus routes
this September because it doesn’t have enough drivers and mechanics to keep
the entire fleet running.

To some extent, the reductions formalize what people already see on the
street, that certain trips get routinely canceled on short notice. The cuts
mainly affect peak-only lines where other buses travel the same roads or a
few blocks away.

Hundreds of travelers could find themselves making an extra transfer to
buses or light rail, instead of enjoying a direct one-seat ride. For
instance, Metro is abandoning its Route 320, just established in October
2021, from Kenmore to South Lake Union via Northgate.

The agency will announce its proposal late Thursday morning, for changes
effective Sept. 2. In-person and online meetings for public education and
feedback haven’t been scheduled yet.

Metro General Manager Michelle Allison said her goal is to replace “ad hoc”
schedules with dependable service. Her agency struggles with the same
problems as peers across the U.S., she said.

“We want to really calm that down, and create that predictability, and
communicate that in the schedules so people have that assurance,” she said.
“So if it’s bad news, people have that guarantee, of what your experience
is going to be like.”

Sound familiar? It’s the same rationale Washington State Ferries announced
October 2021 for its “alternate schedules,” in response to a shortage of
mariners, a situation finally starting to improve in 2023.

In contrast to ferries, which cut service to one boat on busy routes, Metro
says it can still run 96% of full service and that 125 of 156 routes are
unaffected.

Besides the 20 suspended routes, 12 others will operate with fewer daily
trips.

Some would be drastically cut, such as Route 73 through Jackson Park and
Maple Leaf to half-hour frequency instead of 15 minutes at peak. Others
keep abundant service, such as the Route 36 trolley bus across Beacon Hill,
still 10 minutes apart most hours and as often as seven minutes during
afternoon peaks.

Allison can’t completely explain staff shortages, but said Metro has an
older workforce that’s retiring, and that service industries from retail to
health care lost as much as 30% of staff. Metro’s maintenance teams also
lost skilled workers who left instead of complying with government
vaccination mandates, which King County recently ended, she said. (Gov. Jay
Inslee repealed the mandate for state employees Wednesday.)

“We have heard interest from operators, and mechanics in particular, that
they’re interested in coming back,” Allison said. Specifics are being
worked out with Amalgamated Transit Union Local 587, she said.

Local 587 President Kenneth Price said Metro’s wages are lower than other
Western Washington transit agencies, and there’s been little movement by
the county in bargaining. Operators are “also working overtimes to fill
these shortages,” he said. Contract pay scales include a top rate of $37.96
per hour for experienced bus drivers, and much less for new hires, and
$43.46 per hour for mechanics.

The inability to restore neighborhood and downtown service is eroding
public confidence, especially with more commuters returning to work, Price
said.

County Councilmember Rod Dembowski, of North Seattle, called the reductions
painful but needed, to get Metro on a reliable footing before more changes
hit in 2024 to sculpt bus lines around Sound Transit’s new
Northgate-to-Lynnwood train extension.

“We’ve received too many concerns from riders who are out waiting for a bus
that doesn’t come,” he said.

A slow supply chain hinders local service, said Dembowski, who chairs the
council committee overseeing transportation. “It takes nine months to get a
radiator. The pandemic really shook the system, and I think we tried to
come back too quickly.”

Money isn’t the problem.

Metro rode out the pandemic with at least $937 million in federal relief
funds. The agency plans to spend $2.47 billion on transit operations in
2023-24, an increase from $1.98 billion the past biennium, plus additional
capital grants and spending. King County carries $1.2 billion in transit
reserve funds and remains on course to spend $220 million for rechargeable
electric buses by 2034.

This spring Metro converted Route 120, which serves Delridge, White Center
and Burien, into the RapidRide H Line with electronic information signs,
pockets of bus lanes and head-start traffic signals. Travelers glimpsed the
spectacle of tulips in planted medians of Delridge Way. The H Line averages
6,635 daily riders compared to around 4,300 a year ago, said spokesperson
Jeff Switzer.

The MetroFlex van service, where customers use an app to request personal
rides, increased in March so people can choose any destination within
Tukwila, Renton Highlands, northern Kent, Rainier Beach/Skyway, Othello,
Sammamish/Issaquah Highlands and Juanita.

The suspended routes provided about four or five trips per commute period,
usually in corridors with other buses available, Metro says.

The demand for peak-only routes is lower than pre-pandemic, Allison said.
In fact, bus ridership as a whole is “flattening” into an all-day stream.

“Cities are going to come back, people are going to move around, mobility
needs to be there. We want to be the option of choice for riders in the
system, so we have a lot of service out there,” Allison said.

Metro carried 6.5 million passengers in March, predominantly on buses but
also Seattle streetcars, MetroFlex, paratransit, county water taxis and van
pools, totaling 60% of March 2019 counts, says the National Transit
Database. In the roaring 2010s Metro buses carried 400,000 weekday
passengers; they hit 240,000 a few days last month.

Metro to suspend 20 routes in September

Seattle/Shoreline: Routes 15, 16, 18, 29, 55, 64, 301, 304, 320

Eastside: Routes 214, 216, 217, 232, 237, 268, 342

South King County: Routes 114, 121, 167, 190

Other routes will provide fewer daily trips: 7, 10, 20, 28, 36, 73, 79,
225, 230, 231, 255, 345

Thanks all,

*Douglas Trumm*, *Executive Director *
Pronouns*: he, him*
The Urbanist <http://theurbanist.org/> | 320.237.4771
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.transitriders.org/pipermail/transit/attachments/20230511/f39a13b8/attachment.html>