Community Transit

< 2012 System Change

Public Comments Summary

Cutting bus service by 20 percent is not a goal that makes anyone happy, especially the bus riders impacted by the reductions. Unfortunately, Community Transit’s sales tax revenue – reduced by the recession – can no longer sustain our existing service.

Community Transit staff developed three alternatives to reduce service and dedicated the period of June 3 through July 11 to collecting public input.

Comments received by phone and email were added to our online system to provide a complete record of public comments totaling more than 1,800.

Public comments are seriously considered by the board, but are not a “vote.” One reason is the self-selecting nature of people who submit comments. People who believe they are most negatively impacted by changes are most likely to comment. We also recognize that the majority of our information and comments were received online, and some customers have limited or no access to the Internet.

• 50 percent of respondents said they ride commuter routes only
• 28 percent of respondents said they ride local routes only
• 22 percent of respondents said they ride both local and commuter routes

Looking at our actual ridership, we have almost twice as many boardings on local routes as on commuter routes.

Asked to rank the alternatives, 45 percent of all respondents chose Alternative I as their first choice, 33 percent chose Alternative II as their first choice and 28 percent chose III as their first choice. Among local riders, the alternatives ranked II, I, III, while among commuter riders the alternatives ranked I, III, II.

Four hundred riders said their trip would no longer be possible with Alternative III - 25 percent of those respondents ride commuter routes in north and east Snohomish County.

As expected, people answered the questions in a way that favored the kind of routes they ride.

For instance, the majority of overall respondents were from urban areas and they answered the questions about rural coverage vs. urban coverage in a way supporting better service in more populated areas. But people who ride routes on Highway 2 - where service to rural communities could be cut - supported service to outlying areas.

Similarly, when asked about Sunday service:

• Only 26 percent of overall respondents supported minimal Sunday service “if it meant significant cuts to Saturday and afternoon service.” This included the large number of commuter riders who likely do not ride the bus on weekends.
• But 54 percent of local riders supported minimal Sunday service in response to that same question. Of course, the only service that would run on Sundays is local service.

Summary and Details

Responses to the online comment form were compiled on Survey Monkey. Comments received by email, on paper and by phone were also entered into the Survey Monkey tool.

• Survey summary (pdf)

Community Transit staff presented an analysis of the question responses and summary of the additional comments to Community Transit Board members on July 21.

Question 7 asked people first to select a preferred alternative, then to explain why.

• Preferred alternative comments (pdf)

The final question encouraged people to make specific comments about routing, schedule and other issues in the alternatives. Names and other personal information included with some comments has been deleted for privacy reasons.

• Final comments (pdf)

The single most common comment was a request to restore Sunday service (376 comments). The other large category of comments was from commuter route riders who did not like the routing changes in Alternative III (452 comments).

On the other hand, there were 140 commnets supportive of Alternative III, and 46 comments from people who did not want Sunday service restored.