Right now downtown buses are just a place for people who aren't going anywhere to stay out of the rain.

I wish the #44 improvements weren't a “might.” Recently, San Francisco MUNI decided to rearrange its bus stops to dramatically improve efficiency — every route, every street. They announced it and began making the changes immediately. Metro, meanwhile, picks 1 or 2 routes to “experiment” with this already-proven idea (so far, only the #7), announces that they “might” do it, and then sends it into committee for a year or more.

As for the #46: direct Ballard-Fremont service is a great idea, but nobody's going to make a habit of riding a line that runs hourly from 9 to 3. When a route is that sparse, and therefore not a regular part of people's sense of transit options, ridership will remain low. Period.

Lastly, another across-the-board fare increase is a disastrous and unjustified by the quality of service we get. Period. $72/month (peak) or $63/month (off-peak) is outrageously high when every single ride is a nightmare. Considering our non-existent fare enforecement, raising it higher will just encourage more creative-excuse-based fare dodging at the expense of those who actually pay. I recently read that Boston's MBTA, despite 2 fare increases since I moved to Seattle, still costs only $59/month for a subway+bus pass or $40 (!) for a bus-only pass, and has resoundingly rejected a 3rd increase as a solution for its budget woes (and that's for a system with 5-10 minute frequencies across the board).

What Metro SHOULD consider is eliminating paper transfers entirely (one major source of “I'll show you my expired transfer from this morning” fare evasion) and creating a 2-tiered system that rewards ORCA users with discounts (thus massively speeding up the boarding process) and makes cash-paying customers use whole dollars (again, faster) — $2 at all times, or perhaps even $3 at rush hour — rather than screwing it's regular customers as they've proposed.

The good news is that they found funding to keep things going for this year and think they have found funding to keep things going for the next 3 years via some efficiency changes and increases in fares.

For one of the efficiency changes, they might eliminate up to 6 stops for the #44 in Ballard, allowing it to be a faster and more useful bus.

Another efficiency change is looking at ways to increase ridership on the #46.