Community Transit cuts service, raises fares

So, if we wanted to take the bus to see, say my sister and her family on a sunny summer Sunday this year, we'd be out of luck.

Community Transit, the transit system that serves Snohomish County, is implementing service changes that will cut routes and services beginning in June.  Some key points of the plan:

• Increase fares 25 cents across the board
• Suspend Sunday and holiday service on all routes
• Reduce frequency of many routes, including reducing some routes to two round-trips daily!
• Start and end many routes at park & ride lots, rather than on city streets
• Cut routes, including many that have alternative transit options, or duplicate existing service
• Provide $50,000 to local agencies to provide transportation assistance to those in need.

 According to the information that Community Transit has provided (linked above), this is in response to a budgetary shortfall, a pretty common problem across all transit systems these days.  They also state that they have been trying to avoid service cuts such as these for over two years.

To me, the cuts will not help the overall health of the transit system.  It will impact many who can least afford the impact.  There are people out there who use the bus to get to work on the weekends.  In fact, many in service jobs (which are traditionally are not very high paying jobs) work on weekends.  Not all of these people have a car or can afford one. 

They are also forcing more cars onto the roads at a time when our roadways are becoming more and more choked with traffic.  An early morning run to Boeing is being cut.  What are the workers who ride that bus going to do?  They'll have to either form vanpools (not always an easy thing to coordinate) or drive themselves.

A quote from another news item about these changes:

“In my 18 years as an elected official, this is the hardest vote I’ve ever had to take,” said board member and Lynnwood City Council President Ted Hikel. “I don’t know anyone on this board or this staff who likes this, but there are realities out there – there just isn’t any money.”

As much as I dislike this news, and think it will only serve to hurt lower-income users of the system, as well as force more people back into their cars, the Frequently Asked Questions make it clear that the board looked hard at alternatives before settling on this as a means to reduce their operating losses.  With much of the funding for transit coming out of taxes, the options available are limited without legislative action, and in the current economic climate, anything to eek out more funding through taxes and fees is a hard sell.

ACTION NEEDED - Vulnerable User-friendly language in bill before the Senate

I received this from Dave Hiller at the Cascade Bicycle Club today:

Dear Mark,

Two weeks ago, we watched as the Vulnerable Roadway User Bill died on the Senate calendar. Today, however, hope is alive. SB 5838 may be officially dead, but the law's language is being kept alive as an amendment to HB 3001.

Lawmakers from every corner of the state need to know you care about this issue.

Tomorrow at 5pm is the final cutoff in Olympia in this year's short legislative session. It's our last chance to pass HB 3001. Developed by the Bicycle Alliance of Washington, the bill expands bike and pedestrian safety education in traffic schools for bad drivers. It also includes our Vulnerable User Bill in an amendment.

Please call 1-800-562-6000 today. Ask your senator to vote for House Bill 3001. The bill passed overwhelmingly in the house - let's not let it die, too.

It's too late for an email. Please take a minute to call the legislative hotline and leave this message: "Senator, please support House Bill 3001 and the leadership amendment."

Cascade Bicycle Club is in Olympia, working hard to build support for the HB 3001. We need your help today to get it passed.

Thank you,

Please call the legislative hotline at the number above and encourage your legislators to support the bill AND amendment. It is important to encourage both the Senate and the House to support this bill. If the bill passes in an amended state, it will go back to the House for approval, and the House members need to know how you feel.

Vulnerable user bill dies without Senate vote

Tuesday, February 16, was the cutoff for bills to be passed out of their house of origin.  SB 5838 never made it to a vote of the full Senate.  It looks like next year Cascade Bicycle Club, the Bicycle Alliance of Washington and concerned roadway users will have to take it up again.

On a better note, SB 6302, a bill that would have violated federal funding for the I-90 floating bridge by prohibiting light or other fixed rail transit across it, died in committee this year.

Update on the Vulnerable Users' bill

Yesterday we received a response from Senator Joe McDermott, the sponsor of SB 5838, to our letter of support for the bill.  It appears that the bill is on the fringe of moving from committee to the Senate floor for action.

Vulnerable user bill in committee January 26

The 2010 Legislative session is underway and Senate Bill 5838 (the Vulnerable User's bill) has been reintroduced by resolution and referred to the Senate Judicial Committee. The bill is scheduled to be heard by the committee on Tuesday, January 26. I've not been able to find details from the Legislature's web site the time when they will be meeting on Tuesday. It will be in one of the hearing rooms in the John A. Cherberg building on the Capitol Campus in Olympia.

From Dave Hiller's quote in this Publicola post, it looks like there's a chance at a majority yes vote on this bill this time around.

If you want to see this bill advance and possibly get heard on the floor, contact the members of the committee soon!

Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are:
Adam Kline
Debbie Regala
Bob McCaslin
Mike Carrell
Randy Gordon
James Hargrove
Jeanne Kohl-Welles
Pam Roach

The web page for each member liked above has a link with which you can send e-mail to the member, or you can look up their e-mail addresses here and send an e-mail to them directly.

Help pass a Vulnerable User law in Washington!

Cascade Bicycle Club Traffic Justice Summit – Wednesday, October 14 2009, Seattle City Hall

In 2007, the Oregon State Legislature passed the “Vulnerable User” law. In a nutshell, what this law does is to strengthen the penalties against motor vehicle operators found to be at fault in accidents involving “vulnerable users” (pedestrians and cyclists). As we all know, in accidents involving these parties, physics dictates that the motor vehicle will win, and the penalty is high to the loser. Legal codes in Oregon were, as they currently are in many other states, similarly slanted to the favor of the motor vehicle operator. The Vulnerable User law changed that in Oregon by assessing criminal penalties to the at-fault driver when an accident results in severe injury or the death of a vulnerable roadway user (pedestrian or cyclist).

Last legislative session, Cascade Bicycle Club, the Bicycle Alliance of Washington and others tried to bring similar change, legal parity and justice to Washington with Senate Bill 5838. The bill never made it out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In legislative lingo, it “died in committee.” Fortunately, since our legislature is a biennial legislature, any bill that dies in the first year of the legislature, isn’t really dead. When the Speaker of the House and President of the Senate convene the 2010 legislative session, the bill will be revived.

Now is the time to begin planning and working to get Senate Bill 5838 passed and into law.

What you can do:
· Attend the Traffic Justice Summit on Wednesday, October 14 at Seattle City Hall. If you are unable to attend, I’m told that the summit will be aired on the Seattle Channel and available online.
· Know your legislative delegation
· Know who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee
· Call and write your legislative delegation as well as members of the Judiciary committees and encourage them to support this bill. The Legislative hotline can be reached at: 1-800-562-6000.

Funding new ferries with tourism dollars

In reading the sound off on an article on the Seattle PI website, I found a reference to this topic. It seems that a handful of state senators have realized that in addition to being a vital piece of the state highway system (let’s be honest, it’s the only road onto some of the islands in the Puget Sound, and considerable time-saver to get back and forth to the Olympic Peninsula from the Central Puget Sound area), it is also a very popular tourist attraction. Based on this realization, they have introduced Senate Bill 6005 this week.

I’ve read the bill, all 7 pages (small as fiscal and transportation bills go) of it. The bill would tap tourist revenue such as stadium and exhibition hall funding to pay for the replacement of ferries in counties with over one million residents. To be honest, a lot of the technicalities went a bit over my head and I don’t fully understand the entire thing. It appears to me, though, that the bill will tap currently unallocated tourist dollars in these counties to fund ferries. In counties like King County, with two stadiums to pay off from these funds, the money won’t be touched until the current obligations are paid, and then the money will be allocated to paying principal and interest on the purchase of new ferries.

I hope that this bill goes before the Senate Transportation committee soon so I can see a bill analysis that explains the details in more layman’s terms.

From what I understand of the bill right now, I do have some concerns:

• Will it divert funding from existing tourist attractions such as museums, parks, galleries, and other publicly funded tourist facilities?
• There is a potential imbalance in funding the ferry purchase; what if one county has over one million residents and taps that funding, but a county at the other end of a ferry line from it does not, it would seem that the larger county pays the entire bill, and the smaller county reaps the benefit.
• Is this a replacement or supplement to Department Of Transportation funding for the replacement of the ferries?
  

In the end, we’ll just have to wait and see, I guess.