Community Transit

Making Tough Transit Choices

Community Transit continues to be impacted by the recession. Due to low sales tax revenues, the agency has been forced to cut service and restructure itself for an uncertain future economy.

Our mission of providing quality public transportation service has not changed, but the way we go about it is evolving.

As Community Transit considers the future, we are involving the public in our visioning process. Community Transit CEO Joyce Eleanor has hosted several public workshops involving a Transit Values Exercise that allows participants to walk in the shoes of transit planners and decision-makers.

About 90 riders and community leaders and 150 Community Transit employees (including our board members) have worked through our interactive exercise. Their task: to cut costs by 20 percent while prioritizing the kind of transit service they value most. The exercise is based on a fictional transit agency, but the data and the choices are real.

Who Will Lose Service?

For the Transit Values Exercise, we've defined the cuts in terms of who will lose bus service when certain choices are made. We created 15 Rider Cards, each representing a composite of the kinds of people we serve and the kind of bus service they use.

Participants work in groups, and often value different aspects of transit service. One person may value widespread geographic coverage over high ridership, another less service for more hours each day or more frequent service in a shorter span of the day. Some may prioritize the needs of commuter riders who travel mainly at peak times vs. transit dependent riders and students who need flexible service hours.

These are the same real-world trade-offs Community Transit staff and board members must make when considering service cuts.

Our Photo Album describes the process we go
through in the Transit Values Exercise.

In order to reduce expenses by 20 percent, each table must identify several riders whose service will be cut. Even though there is a single personality represented on each card, that person is representative of others who use that same bus service.

The choices each participant group makes are plugged into a spreadsheet that calculates the outcomes of their decisions.

Whose service is cut can have a big impact on ridership, geographic coverage, efficiency and subsidy.

Real-World Scenarios

Even though our exercise, riders and map are for a fictitious system, they represent the real people who will be affected by the choices we need to make. There are about 3,000 combinations that can be derived from this exercise, just as there are many ways that real service can be cut. But for all cuts there are impacts.

Community Transit is developing several alternative scenarios for cutting service by about 20 percent in February 2012. Each option will involve a trade-off in values just as in our exercise.

Unfortunately, it is difficult, if not impossible, to accommodate all the different values people place on transit service. This exercise is not meant to convince the public that any particular value or final service alternative is the right one. Rather, it illustrates the difficult trade-offs required when service cuts are needed.

Next Steps

Over the next few months we will begin our Alternatives Process. Extensive public outreach will take place in June to solicit input. A formal public hearing before the Board of Directors will take place in July. The board will then give staff direction, based on public input, that whittles the three alternatives into one final proposal. The final service proposal is expected to be presented to the board in September.

Economy Forces New Approach

Since 2008 we've cut $29 million in spending, deferred projects, delayed bus purchases and borrowed from reserves to maintain service on the road. In June 2010, we eliminated eight of 64 bus routes and all Sunday and holiday service, a 15 percent service cut. We also raised fares. We have eliminated more than 100 jobs.

The worst part is that it’s not over.

Sales taxes are just beginning to rebound, but at a very slow pace. As many economists are saying, the economy is being reset and Community Transit, like other businesses and agencies, must adjust. Moving forward, our agency is looking at resizing our operations to be sustainable in this new economy.

This will mean, unfortunately, a 20 percent service cut in 2012.