[news_to_me]

To me, this is just evidence to expand public transit even more. There's only so much road space, and as the population grows we need to more efficiently utilize it – busses and rail are some of the most efficient ways. While we always need to support some car use cases, public transit is really the long-term solution to traffic.

[eksu]

I would love to have good public transit, but being someone who bused from 2008 until 2015 it will never happen.

Busses in the city are plagued by our homeless. A lot of the busses simply don't feel safe, especially if you're a female traveling solo.

The exception to the rule seems to be the 'commuter' busses, double deckers that go to park and rides straight downtown, but park and rides are full by 6:30 with not enough parking, and service is limited.

Connecting busses out of county (Community Transit, Gnomish county) sucks, no service out of 9-5 hours Monday through Friday. Total roundtrips for most people start at 2 hours and go up to 4 (my commute to college and home).

Ultimately, the buses are torn between two opposing causes: serving disadvantaged members of the community by being cheap and helping people commute at odd hours, or serving mass commuters that work downtown, and it fails at both.

[jschwartzi]

It sure as shit doesn't fail me when I'm commuting home from downtown at 1:00 in the morning after a concert.

[stephengillie]

.

[loeg]

> Commuter buses … pay for the city buses that serve the disadvantaged

This is actually the opposite of the truth. Commuter buses are far more expensive routes to run due to both the distance (wear and tear, fuel) and the deadhead (empty) return trips. City routes cost far less to run per head.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_County_Metro#Operating_co...

> Metro's higher-than-average cost per boarding can be at least partially attributed to its high percentage of commuter routes, which run at peak hours only, and often only in one direction at a time. As of 2011, 100 of Metro's 223 routes are peak-only. These routes require significant deadheading (particularly on the one-way routes), as well as a very large part-time labor force, both of which drive up costs.[29]

> Metro's lowest-cost route overall, route 4 (East Queen Anne to Judkins Park), had a cost per boarding of only $0.46 during peak hours in 2009. By way of contrast, Metro's peak-only route with the lowest cost per boarding was route 206 (Newport Hills to International School), at $2.04. Metro's highest cost route by this measure, route 149 (Renton Transit Center to Black Diamond), had a peak time cost of $34.47 per boarding. Route 149 serves the rural southeastern corner of King County.[30]

For the direct source, check out this PDF: http://metro.kingcounty.gov/am/reports/2009/2009-RtPerf.pdf

Starting on page 24 (20 in the document), you can see look at "Fare Rev. / Op. Exp. Ratio." The "West Subarea" is the city of Seattle; the East and South subareas are suburbs. You can see that the aggregate fare recovery per operating expenses is much higher in Seattle than in routes serving the suburbs.

[andrewguenther]

I agree that more transit is necessary, but the city just hasn't been keeping up. They are making it harder for cars without providing viable alternatives.