To match service levels with actual revenues, King County Metro Transit must move forward with a first round of unprecedented service cuts Sept. 27, canceling, reducing and revising dozens of bus routes.
Service will be canceled on 28 routes and another 13 will be reduced or revised.
Riders should visit the Metro website to review the September cuts and reductions and begin to assess daily travel plans for later this fall.
Sept. 27 service changes
(* – potentially revised in two phases)
• 28 deleted routes: 7X, 19, 47, 48X, 61, 62, 139, 152, 161, 173, 202, 203, 205X, 209, 210, 211X, 213, 215, 243, 250, 260, 265, 280, 306X, DART routes 909, 919, 927, 935.
• 13 revised routes: 27*, 30*, 200*, 204, 208, 212*, 236*, 238*, 249*, 312X, 331, DART routes 903, 931.
• Six route adjustments: No-cost route scheduled adjustments or revisions also are posted online: Routes 24, 48, 49, 122, 178, 201.
• Routes to continue under agreement with the City of Seattle: Night owl routes 82, 83, 84
The scheduled cuts will help bring Metro’s spending within its existing revenues. Last week, the King County Council adopted service cuts totaling 349,000 hours between September 2014 (161,000 hours) and February 2015 (188,000 hours); specific routes for the February cuts will be reviewed and made final by an executive/Council ad-hoc committee.
The King County Council will determine future Metro transit service levels this fall as part of deliberations on the County’s 2015-16 biennial budget.
Six years of avoiding service cuts
The cuts and reductions come after six years of work by Metro Transit and the county to preserve daily service for riders in the face of decreasing revenues. Metro reduced spending, increased fares, charged temporary fees and made ongoing agency improvements to reduce costs. Service cuts were identified based on analysis of ridership productivity, where service is provided and who depends most on transit service.
County sales tax revenue forecasts continue to show fluctuations in Metro’s key revenue source – which provides more than 50 percent of transit funding. In turn, Metro continues to budget bus service based on identified dependable revenue levels.
