Come September 29th, King County Metro will switch its routes to “pay on entry” only. The date will also mark the end of Seattle’s downtown Ride Free Area. Unless the Transit Riders Union can save it:
The Transit Riders Union is asking the County Council to reconsider their decision to eliminate the RFA. Visit http://transitriders.org to learn more and to send an email petition letter to our County Council members and County Executive Dow Constantine (direct link to petition: http://transitriders.org/rfa_petition/).
Want to learn more? The Transit Riders Union is holding a public meeting and workshop on the Ride Free Area:
Tuesday, September 4th, 6pm
Capitol Hill Public Library meeting room*
425 Harvard Avenue East
(served by Metro routes 8, 60, 49, 10, 11)
*This event is not sponsored by the Seattle Public Library.
The group argues that eliminating the Ride Free zone will cause “longer delays, more congestion, hurting downtown businesses, and stranding low income riders.”
…to hear comments for and against this. To me, it seems like it will help make thing run more smoothly. I think the back-door entry and the pay-as-you-leave is stupid and I never really understood what the RFA was for other than getting drunks from one end of downtown to the other. It’s not like it goes anywhere residential, right? You have to pay eventually if you’re actually going to or from your home/work.
The Rise Free Zone was originally started to offer downtown commuters options from getting to remote parking areas (or neighborhoods in general) into the downtown core for free. I think that time has passed as more options than ever are available (Link, SLUT, Sounder and improved bus routes).
Ride the bus? Pay for the bus and do it as you board. No more free rides. Simple.
The bus system is chronically broke, let’s get rid of the extra burden of providing free rides and collect some revenue. It will also help eliminate the “pay as you enter” “pay as you leave” confusion
Cities with Ride Free Zones
– Seattle
– Salt Lake City
Cities without Ride Free Zones
– London
– Paris
– Moscow
– New York
– Chicago
– Tokyo
– San Francisco
… even Portland just canned it….
This kind of thing makes me crazy. Metro had SO many public meetings and comment sessions about this issue. That would have been the time to rally something like this together, not 25 days before it is slated to start. Not when posters have been printed and procedures put into place. There is just no way Metro is goog to reverse this decision.
No free ride zone & pay as you enter. Simple & predictable.
it will probably cause less delays because it will be streamlining how people pay. Pay as you enter, all the time, leave through the back, thus allowing paying people to enter easily through front. It will become a nice easy revolving door without anyone wondering when you are supposed to pay.
And there is no way that it will be stranding low income riders. Considering a lot of low income riders are RIDING in and out of the free zone and have to pay anyways.
What it will do is streamline a process that should have been streamlined already. How backwards is Seattle that it took so long to do a slight improvement to their public transportation. (Which for a “city” is still pretty pitiful.)
I am very happy they are getting rid of the ride free zone.
I’m pleased they are eliminating it as well.
The only delays I anticipate are a) the learning curve right at the beginning as people get confused and try to exit from the front, and b) a slight delay in boarding if anyone needs the handicap ramp, since only the front door has that. But there’s a delay when boarding/unloading the people who need the ramp already, so I don’t see any major difference here.
I’m not sure how they are arguing that there will be more congestion (i.e., more riders, I guess?) and simultaneously ‘strand’ low income riders who presumably can no longer afford the fare?
Honestly, the biggest impact will be to tourists who stay in the downtown core and zip around the ride free area without needing to worry about ORCA cards or bus fare. But I suspect that is still a fairly small number of people, and if I can manage to pay to ride transit in Rome/London/Paris/NY/Vegas, etc. etc, then people visiting Seattle can do so as well.
60,000 people live Downtown. So even though that pales in comparison to the 400,000 people that work Downtown, that’s still half a Bellevue or an entire Redmond worth of residents.
And tourists can buy short-term passes anyway.
Downtown has thousands of homeless and low-income folks. Many of them travel only within the RFA. Fortunately for those that are mobility impaired and disabled many of the services they access are located downtown (ie DESC, DSHS, KC Public Health, YWCA, Compass Center and tons more). For many folks the RFA is the only reason they can make it from one appointment to the next. It’s ignorant to believe it will not effect the daily lives of these people.
The good news is that the city is going to continue to run a free bus on a loop through Downtown. The route isn’t set yet, but it will be something like HMC->2nd and Yesler-> Blanchard-> 5th->Stewart and then back to HMC. The good news is folks won’t have to huff anf puff to get up James or Yesler to get to HMC. They’ll just need to ride the bus in a giant circle to get four blocks.
Yes, it won’t effect me or many of the people that read this blog, but it will have a negative impact on thousands of Seattle’s most vulnerable.
PS The anti-poor sentiment and lack of sympathy that many commentators on this blog harbor is astonishing. I would think that Seattle and Cap Hill for that matter would think a little more seriously about equality. Also, I have nothing to do with the TRU. I admire that the are trying to save the RFA, but it’s gone. They should’ve had this meeting a few months ago.
This issue has been studied extensively before the decision was made and Metro is making allowances to help the low-income and poor get around the downtown area. Many of the most vulnerable also get reduced fares or bus tickets (of course some of these get sold by those same people, but….) This will make the bus system easier and it will make it more likely that more riders will actually pay the fare. As a person who is very low income but who does not get help from governmental programs that pay my bus fare this does affect me in negative ways, but I think the benefits outweigh the negatives.
If they were riding the bus four blocks, good riddance. Transit should complement walking not replace it.
I’ll feel sorry for the bus drivers. They are going to get a LOT of grief from the bums.
Sad but true – these people should have been lobbying the likes of Councilmember Lambert and her suburban counterparts a year ago, not Executive Constantine three weeks before the changes take effect.
The county ultimately saves very little by eliminating the Free Ride Area, but it was both a political and financial decision, and not one likely to be reversed at this stage. Best thing that could happen now is mitigating the effects by providing some free service to those who need it to various services in and near the CBD.