In order to save money, preserve bus service and operate more efficiently, Metro Transit is making changes to its service. Some of those changes include Ballard routes.
Linda Thielke with Metro sent the following alert for routes serving Ballard:
• Route 17 – There are routing changes in downtown Seattle for both northbound and southbound trips.
• Route 28 – On weekdays, the southbound express trip to downtown Seattle from Aurora Avenue and North 143rd Street at 5:34 a.m. will be discontinued. Also discontinued are all shuttle trips operating between Aurora Avenue and North 143rd Street and between Fremont Avenue North and North 34th Street.
• Route 46 – The westbound trips to Golden Gardens from Fremont Avenue North and North 34th Street at 11:33 a.m., 12:33 p.m. and 1:33 p.m., and the eastbound trips to Fremont from Golden Gardens at 12:10 p.m., 1:10 p.m. and 2:10 p.m. will be discontinued.
• Route 75 – On weekday evenings and all day Sunday, service frequency between Ballard and Northgate will improve from 60 minutes to 30 minutes. Seventy-nine trips per week between Ballard and Northgate and 109 trips between Northgate and the U-District will be added.
“Unfortunately, due to reduced sales-tax revenue for transit, Metro also had to eliminate some trips on designated routes,” Thielke writes, “These trip reductions were chosen to minimize the disruption for bus riders whenever possible.”
All service changes can be found here. The changes will begin this Saturday, October 2nd.
I guess it’s better to keep overpaid, union drivers than decent service…no wonder I gave up on buses around here.
God forbid a bus driver be in a union.
Want low taxes? Get what you pay for.
We don’t have low taxes and we still don’t get what we’re paying for. Average Metro bus driver pay is $60,000 a year.
Time to fire a few of the transit planners at Metro. I personally know one who makes a heck of a lot more than $60,000 a year, spends his time scolding people who drive cars, and then cuts needed bus routes. These people are a joke.
Yes who needs transit planners? Good suggestion.
And we’re supposed to have a problem with that? Seattle is expensive and the drivers are high quality.
We do have low taxes relative to other metro areas like Seattle.
Exactly and what you are paying for with your taxes are a lot of fat salaries and, benefit and retirement packages that people in the private sectors could only dream of.
So enjoy waiting in the rain for your bus.
The drivers can move to Tukwilla and take the train in.
Low taxes? What are you smoking? Maybe you should see my property tax bill.
Maybe you should move to Tukwila instead of living beyond your means in a house you can not afford.
We have one of the lowest overall tax burdens for a metro area our size. Good city services cost money. City employees should be able to afford to live in the city they work for, even bus drivers.
Oh yes, working for the City to Seattle is a pathway to riches!
Tim,
That’s a lie. The average Metro driver makes $47,000.00 a year – LESS than the median for King County.
LOL. Tell you what Professor. Metro is hiring. Why don’t you apply and “live the dream”?
I live in Ballard. Washington State has one of the lowest tax rates in the nation. Your property tax is high because we have no state income tax.
You’ve gotten every tax raise in Seattle you’ve ever wanted and yet never enough money.
FYI my house is all but paid for, thanks for your concern. Enjoy waiting in the rain to be driven around by people, many making double the city’s average income.
Actually we’re both wrong, it’s $61,000 according to the Sept. 7th Seattle Times report:
“Metro drivers rank third nationally in wages, with a top rate of $28.47 an hour, and the average yearly income, including overtime, is almost $61,000 a year, according to a Metro review that includes full- and part-time drivers.”
Enjoy waiting in the rain.
Really? So why will my property taxes only go down 4% if your cure- all income taxes passes?
What about the 15 route? Reading the schedule, 60 runs a day and most of them empty or almost empty. Yes there are times during the day when the bus is almost full or full, but they are few and far between.
An empty bus is worse than a Hummer.
Considering that is with overtime, it is not that much. If we hired twice as many drivers and the average was $30,500, would that make you feel better? And the 28.57 is the top rate, not the average, at least according to this article.
At least then you wouldn’t have to wait in the rain; but if you prefer your taxes to simply pay fat salaries and pensions be my guest. I’ll drive to work.
FYI few salaried people I know work just 40 hrs a week and they get no overtime.
People make their own choices in life, if that is what they want to do, then good for them. BTW, those roads you are driving on are paid for and maintained the same way, maybe you shouldn’t use those either.
buy a rain jacket, it will keep you dry while you wait and the sales tax will help metro maintain service.
So many services are sales tax funded. Those sales tax revenues are dried up.
This very problem is why we need an income tax instead of sales tax funded government.
Well, I guess the bums win again too. They still get to use the “free ride zone” downtown. This way they can still shuttle from one end of downtown to another while they scare away the tourists and commuters it was intended for. From taxation to spending and management, this city cannot prioritize for crap.
….and when the economy turns around, they’ll lower the sales tax? What’s the bet if 1098 passes in 5 yrs the middle class will be paying sales, property and income taxes and like California, Olympia will spend us into a ditch.
I’ve got no problem with drivers who’ve been on the job for years making a decent living. No problem whatsoever. Seattle isn’t cheap and I’d rather have a driver who can afford to live here without having to have a second part time job just to make ends meet.
If you pay them crap you’ll get high turnover and wind up with a bunch of second rate inexperienced drivers. For a good example of the unintended consequences of low wages for public employees see the entire Mexican police force.
Actually both you and the Times are wrong. The average yearly income is $47K. The Times number merely takes the highest income level and the lowest income and divides by 2. If you average ALL salaries (remember – 38% of Operators are part-time, and just over 200 of the rest earned over $75K last year), the average is closer to $47K.
Why do you assume that I favor some kind of “cure-all”? If your property taxes go down by 4%, they’ll be on a par with other states that have income taxes. There is no “cure-all”.
Not sure why – but my previous post didn’t appear.
I am a Metro driver. I am not over paid. Last year, I made $27K driving for Metro working every hour that I could. I earned every dollar, too. My Grandfather was a Metro driver for 43 years, following his service in Europe in World War II. Both he – and I – deliver “decent service”.
Shame on you – neighbor. I not only drive buses in Ballard, I live here.
Funny, because most bus drivers in Seattle get high salaries yet still drive like Mexico City drivers.
i’m not afraid to take the bus downtown!
most tourists that don’t take the bus only do so because they don’t understand the system and think they’ll end up in the far reaches of washington.
Washington State stupidly ties necessities like public transit to sales taxes, which are both highly regressive and prone to drastic drop-offs when the economy tanks and the poor and middle class (who pay the vast majority of them) have to scale back their spending habits.
We end up fighting over 0.1% or 0.2% scraps for some pretty basic service. All while charging the nation’s highest transit fares — also inherently regressive — for a system that, objectively, sucks.
Metro driver pay isn’t the crux of the problem. Although I do wish, for what they’re paid, they would drive a bit more like they give a damn when you get there!
Metro administration, however, frequently makes decisions that don’t help things. Note those cuts to the 28 “shuttle trips” above. There is now no service WHATSOEVER between Fremont and Ballard after 12:20 AM, seven days a week (and less-than-hourly after 11). A simple 2-mile trip may now becomesa (drunk?) driving experience for many.
Meanwhile, the 75 is a TERRIBLE route, subject to ridiculous detours and prone to delays. Who cares about half-hourly service when it still takes 40+ minutes to get to Northgate? Now that’s wasting resources!
Also, we continue to allow both parties in Olympia to use the Seattle region — the state’s primary economic driver — as a political punching bag and net tax donor to everywhere else.
Major cities in other parts of the country receive state contributions to their transit infrastructure (for it is indeed a public good that benefits the state). Seattle’s representatives in Olympia have, by and large, been pretty lousy about fighting this vestigial ’70s-holdover pit-the-bumpkins-against-the-city politicking.
No cure-all? I guess that means 1098 is just the start before we all get hit by income taxes.
So you work part time. Average pay is still $61k, far too high. Need to make government workers pay more of their health care and pension costs as Gov. Gregoire suggests. The free ride is over.
Bs, it was not a Times number, it was Metro’s number and sorry you dint get to take part time income and call it ‘full time’ to rig your numbers.
Totally! We should just let the drivers drive wherever they want.
give the job a try especially in downtown and THEN complain about the pay.
It’s not “bs” – it’s what happens when you actually look at average income, i.e. you total all income of all drivers for a given year, then divide by the number of Operators. That isn’t “rigging” the numbers, it’s called “math. If you claim that the “average yearly income of a Metro bus driver” is “x” – then you aren’t providing an honest number unless you average all drivers – including the part timers (again – over a third of all Metro drivers are part-time).
Average pay is NOT $61K, it’s $47K. Most drivers earn between $35-55K per year. Hardly wealthy by any standard. There is no “free ride” – I pay premiums, deductibles, and all the rest. Maybe you should turn off Glenn Beck for 5 minutes and get a dose of reality. Try this: Google “Puget Sound Transit Operators” (this comments section doesn’t permit links) and click on “Bus Driver Reveals Lavish Livestyle”. Morons parrotting right-wing talking points have no clue, and no respect for those of us who serve and support our communities. At the very minimum, they/you labor under some bizarre alternate reality.
0%
Crosscut: Metro drivers’ wages threaten bus service
“In 2000 compensation for Metro’s bus drivers was about $79 million per year. By 2009 bus driver compensation rose to about $135 million per year, an increase of 70 percent since two tax increases were imposed.
Nearly 10 percent of all bus drivers make more than $75,000 per year.
What is remarkable is the growth of this high-wage group since the two sales tax increases. In 2000, there were only 19 of these high-wage bus drivers and they cost taxpayers $1.6 million per year. By 2009 and after the two sales tax increases, there were 243 high-wage drivers, costing taxpayers $20.7 million per year, an increase of nearly 1,200 percent.
Now King County Metro officials are negotiating with the bus union for a new labor contract and Executive Dow Constantine has already called for county unions to suspend automatic cost-of-living allowances for next year.
The president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 587, Paul Bachtel, is on record saying that suspending automatic pay increases is unacceptable. And in a surprise twist, Bachtel also suggests the meteoric growth in salaries is not enough, drivers should be paid more money, and Metro should cut service to the public to pay for it.
The irony of a union bus leader calling for bus service cuts is amusing, but given how fast wages have risen in the last few years, his call for even more money displays just how out of touch the bus union is from reality. Not even the most ardent transit advocate could support the union’s position. Cutting existing bus service (especially when ridership is near all-time highs) in trade for salaries demonstrates precisely how much of an obstacle the bus union is to expanding the service promised to voters.
Metro officials and, ultimately, the King County Council and the previous two county executives have allowed bus-driver wages to soak up money that should have been used to deliver the service promised to voters.”
Not according to your employer:
“the average yearly income, including overtime, is almost $61,000 a year, according to a Metro review that includes full- and part-time drivers.”
If you include part time drivers you are rigging the figures.Part time drivers can get other work and may have other income sources so their figures do not reflect what they annual incomes may be.
BTW the $61k a year figure that Metro gave INCLUDES part timers.