King County Metro Poised To Expand And Revise Late-Night Bus Service

Late-night bus service is poised to get a major upgrade this year. The Night Owl route network will get a boost in service hours and see the legacy spaghetti routes give way to a connected, legible network. Up to 11,000 service hours would be allocated to expanded late-night bus service with 8,800 service hours directly funded by the City of Seattle through Proposition 1 dollars. The proposal would also put a nail in the coffin on Routes 82, 83, and 84 which would finally meet their demise. Service hours from those routes would be reinvested to better performing routes.

The proposal that King County Executive Dow Constantine and Seattle Mayor Ed Murray have submitted to the King County Metropolitan Council is somewhat similar to the one we saw floated in October 2016. The primary differences, however, is that new service on Route 62 has been dropped while service on Routes 44, 48, 65, and 67 have been added. The latter changes should facilitate better service to Northeast Seattle neighborhoods and make direct connections between neighborhoods much easier in North Seattle and east of Downtown.

Upthegrove Pushing Free Transit On Boozy Holidays

Meanwhile, King County Councilmember Dave Upthegrove wants to go a step further and extend transit service and make it free on “boozy” holidays of New Year’s Eve and Fourth of July. He has requested Executive Constantine prepare a report on how to do that by June 1st.

Because of the benefits to public safety and personal mobility, King County Metro should explore options for providing free late-night service on the Fourth of July and the evening of New Year’s Eve and early morning of New Year’s Day.  King County Metro should explore partnerships to fund, promote and sustain the free late-night service.  King County Metro should also encourage other transit agencies in the central Puget Sound region to provide free late-night service on those holidays.

King County Councilmember Upthegrove is also a Sound Transit Board Member so conceivably he could exercise some influence on the transit agency. Other cities have superior late night transit service, as Upthegrove explained.

“[T]ransit agencies in Chicago, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Orange County (California), Portland (Oregon), San Francisco, San Jose and Vancouver (British Columbia) are among those providing free transit service on New Year’s Eve and early morning of New Year’s Day,” Upthegrove argued in his legislation.

In contrast, the Seattle Department of Transportation’s strategy has recently relied on partnering with app-based taxi company Uber instead of extending transit service on boozy holidays like New Year’s Eve. The scheme seems to go like this: Uber offers a $10 voucher and gets good press and essentially free advertising from the City. Of course surge pricing often erased any savings and left many late-night revelers with a hefty fare even with the voucher.