Crisis averted for Queen Anne’s public transit riders. Changes to King County Metro service that could have cut up to 600,000 service hours of bus routes, heavily-affecting quite a few neighborhood routes including the 2, 4, 15 and 45, will not happen.
The Metropolitan King County Council said Friday it will approve a $20 car-tab fee to spare Metro bus service from deep cuts, according to a report by The Seattle Times.
A vote won’t come until Monday, but suburban Republicans Jane Hague and Kathy Lambert — who had been against bypassing voters — said they would supply the decisive votes in exchange for a package of reforms and efficiencies in Metro.
Those changes include: phasing out Metro’s subsidy for the free-ride zone in downtown Seattle, running smaller buses on less popular routes, and providing $24 in bus tickets to people who pay the fees; people who don’t want those tickets can donate the value to a pool of human-service agencies.
Proposed cuts would have seen drastic cuts to Queen Anne-area bus routes. Thankfully, they will remains as-is for the foreseeable future.
You can read the rest of The Seattle Times article here.