Metro Transit manager likes Seattle plan but says we need a regional solution
May 21, 2014, 5:41 AM | Updated: 10:35 am
As bus riders plead for their favorite routes to be saved, cities like Seattle are deciding on whether to pay for Metro service on their own to stave off future cuts.
Metro provides 400,000 rides a day, yet it’s budget gap is still $75 million a year.
The only tax that primarily funds Metro Transit is the sales tax, and General Manager Kevin Desmond said the agency is still trying to dig out of the recession.
“The Great Recession was a very bad time,” he said. “That opened up an enormous structural gap between our spending and our revenues here. We’ve worked mightily over the last six years to close that gap by about $800 million. But the gap was $1.2 billion. We’ve got a structural gap where taxes are just not making up the difference.”
Even with tax revenues recovering, it’s still not enough to pay for the 1,100 buses that are on the roads during peak hours, and Desmond said Metro decided, during the peak of the recession, to put off service cuts as long as it could.
“If they raise Metro fares by 30 cents, that would give them $840,000 a week, $40 million a year.”
Read: Dori’s take
Other regional transit agencies simply slashed their services, some by as much as 30 percent.
Why not increase fares to cover the difference?
Desmond said Metro has already done that. “Between 2008 and 2011, we raised the fare four times,” he said. “That increased the base fare by 80 percent.” The King County Council has also approved another $0.25 fare increase for early 2015.
Raising the fares too fast and too much, Desmond said, will also push riders away from the bus as their primary option.
“It no longer becomes cost effective when you have a choice,” he said. “The vast majority of people who take Metro Transit have a choice. They have a car at home.”
How will Metro be able to stop these cuts and move back in the other direction?
Desmond said he’s intrigued by the pay for service plans Seattle is considering. He thinks they might work in the short term as a band aid, but he doesn’t see them as the permanent fix.
“We need a regional solution,” he said.
That regional solution, Desmond believes, is going to require the public realizing that at some point, it will have to pay for infrastructure or this region will suffer.
“Your children will pay the bill, and the bill will be much, much bigger if we put off investments today and ask our children or grandchildren to pay for that,” he said.
