The facts about trolley buses and Metro service cuts

I have been hearing a lot of concern from Capitol Hill residents that King County may be considering “getting rid” of electric trolleys.  I too am a big fan of our electric trolleys as a clean, quiet technology that works well in Seattle’s hilly urban neighborhoods and am glad to hear strong support for maintaining our electric trolley system.

However, I want to clear up some misconceptions about what King County is considering.  As you likely know, Metro Transit’s trolley buses are reaching the end of their useful life and will soon need to be replaced.  Before making a large investment with the public’s transit dollars to replace the trolleys, our county auditor recommended that Metro study the bus technologies available and evaluate their costs and benefits.  The study will be taking place in 2011, and I made sure the study will look beyond a simple cost comparison to evaluate other criteria such as environmental benefits and noise impacts.  The study must also include opportunities for the public to provide input.  I am a strong proponent of maintaining our successful electric trolley system, but I also look forward to the results of the study, as it may present opportunities to upgrade our system and address some of the issues with our trolleys, like the problems running them when snow or construction impacts their routes.  I will, however, strongly resist any attempt to replace our electric trolleys with hybrid diesel buses simply to save money, and I hope I can count on your support next year to let other King County leaders know how popular our electric trolleys are.

I want to draw your attention to another alarming issue facing our transit system—Metro Transit is facing a severe funding gap due to this Great Recession.  We are projected to have to cut 600,000 annual service hours—17% of the system—by 2015 to balance the shortfall.  In Seattle alone, we would have to completely cut the equivalent of 14 major routes like Metro Route 10 in order to bridge this gap.  We have explored every opportunity to avoid service cuts—including implementing efficiencies identified by an audit of Metro, raising fares, reducing capital spending, spending down reserves, enacting a property tax for transit authorized by the 2009 legislature, and deferring some service investments approved by voters in 2006. We are now nearly out of tools to save our system and may need additional funding authority from the state legislature to avoid cuts.

I helped create a Regional Transit Task Force of community leaders who will be making recommendations this September about the future of our transit system.  If you are concerned about the potential for losing bus service, you may want to share your perspective with the Task Force as well as your other elected leaders.