Better Transit in Pierce County: Pierce Transit

This post is the fourth in a series, adapted from an article I wrote for my blog, Transportation Matters, a Pacific Northwest-flavored blog that discusses railway planning, urban planning, and related politics.

The previous post described three proposed improvements to bus transit in Tacoma. This article proposes four improvements for Pierce Transit:

• Secure a Sales Tax Increase for Pierce Transit
• Increase More Busline Frequencies to 15 minutes or Better
• Invest in a Pierce County Bus Transit Grid
• Expand the Pierce Transit Service Area into Greater Pierce County

Secure a Sales Tax Increase for Pierce Transit

For significantly improved local transit service, Pierce Transit should seek a modest sales tax increase. This would secure several million dollars of additional annual revenue for transit operations, facility improvements and maintenance. A plan for how the money would be collected and spent should be given to voters sooner rather than later. Those plans should prioritize better frequency of the most productive buslines, superior connections on the service grid, and incremental reliability improvements over so-called BRT upgrades and expansions of coverage.

Today, Pierce Transit is supported by a 0.6 percent sales tax. Its voter-approved limit is 0.9 percent, which allows the agency to seek a sales tax increase of 0.3 percent, or an additional $0.03 per $10 purchase. For a large urban area with a dominant city of metropolitan importance, the current rate of support is low compared to our peers. As subarea transit expert Chris Karnes notes, Pierce Transit is funded at half the rate [of King County Metro] in a county with a smaller tax base, with no supplemental funding from the City of Tacoma". Community Transit, an agency serving a distributed suburban population like that found in Pierce County, also benefits from a 1.2 percent sales tax rate. This discrepancy should be reduced or eliminated. Pierce Transit needs to grow and there is excess financial capacity to do so.

While Sound Transit gets all the attention and big dollars, local transit providers like Pierce and Metro Transit are the actual backbone of our system. They should be recognized and supported as such. With more funding, Pierce Transit should be held accountable for the responsible delivery of upgraded transit service that reflects a careful investment of taxpayer monies.

Pierce Transit's previous attempt to increase its sales tax rate, in November 2012, failed by 915 votes. At the time, the agency's transit benefit district had a population greater than 550,000 people.

Increase More Busline Frequencies to 15 minutes or Better

For Pierce Transit, an increase in the sales tax must result in a system that offers all day 15-minute headways for as many riders as possible. Core transit services like Route 1-6th Ave, Route 2, and Route 3 should be considered for peak hour services that see better than 15 minute frequencies. This would bring those lines into operational conformance with the T Line or Route 1-Pacific Ave, the latter of which will be supplemented by the Enhanced Bus overlay to Tacoma Dome Station (but not Downtown Tacoma).

Frequency increases should be prioritized for buslines that have the greatest ridership and highest productivity. Careful attention should be given to routes that are substantially interlined or are closely paralleled by other services. This would ensure that their performance is not undervalued and overlooked as a consequence of their duplication. This should, for example, result in at least one 15-minute service though the North End of Tacoma as Routes 11, 13, and 16-when considered altogether-constitute one of Pierce Transit's top 10 busiest transit corridors.

Ridership and productivity data is readily available for review and decision making. Below are recent performance datasheets made available by Pierce Transit. Even a cursory review will uncover dominant transit services and corridors. Invest in those first.

Pierce Transit: Average Weekday Boardings, 2022Pierce Transit: Average Saturday Boardings, 2022

Pierce Transit: Average Sunday Boardings, 2022

Pierce Transit: Average Weekday Productivity, January-June 2023

Pierce Transit: Average Saturday Productivity, January-June 2023

Pierce Transit: Average Sunday Productivity, January-June 2023

Invest in a Pierce County Bus Transit Grid

Transit in Pierce County calls out for a grid network that takes advantage of the existing arterial road grid.

The grid is both logical and scalable. It can be expanded in a sequential manner that improves upon the strengths of the system. The grid excels as a transit layout by greatly improving frequencies and reliability through simplified (linear) routes and leveraging connections between them. It also maximizes the coverage area by avoiding route duplication wherever feasible. While the use of connections does result in the loss of some one-seat trips, in its place arises countywide transit mobility that is very achievable, fiscally responsible, and intuitive for users. Pierce Transit, with the support of Pierce County and its incorporated cities, should work toward a system that strictly adheres to the grid.

The Pierce County Integrated Transit Plan is one such system. This would require major route changes and corresponding Title VI equity analyses. Existing routes would be either extended, truncated, straightened, lengthened, shortened, or have some unique combination of changes. That is if they are not cancelled entirely for new lines that honor the grid planning framework. While street railways are not held to the grid, they are heavily influenced by it. Rail extensions should avoid harming grid buslines by taking over entire corridors where appropriate, and be extended as needed to close a gap in the grid. Examples of both can be found in the Integrated Transit Plan: a railway on 6th Avenue that preserves the 19th Street busline over the hillside, the extension of the Mildred Street tracks to Regent's Boulevard, and the majority-rail takeover of South Tacoma Way.

The transit grid does not need to be built all-at-once. However, the countywide system does need to be planned all-at-once so that new funding can be invested into it quickly. Having a well developed comprehensive transit plan would also prevent new development that hinders its realization. Numerous road (re)constructions throughout Pierce County have failed to properly account for transit-if they do so at all. This is the condition of an area that does not take transit seriously. This persists even as jurisdictions craft comprehensive plan updates that rely on transit to achieve aggressive climate, mobility, and equity objectives. For transit, there is a serious misalignment of local public values and action.

Tacoma-Pierce County is arranged on a grid of streets and roads. Transit must take advantage of it and leverage the inherent strengths.

When Pierce Transit restructured its system in 2017 and leaned into the grid, it paved the way for similar improvements in the future. It was an intelligent reform by an agency whose roots are a street railway of hub-and-spoke design. Given the County's dispersed populations and destinations, Pierce Transit's fiscal limitations, and the increasing need for convenient transit here, the establishment of a robust County transit grid is a necessity. Executing the grid of the Pierce County Integrated Transit Plan will require a significant public investment that will likely exceed present limits of taxation for transit. This represents a major hurdle given the public's lack of approval of major Sound Transit projects and their long-term financing instruments.

Overall, the use of connections can reduce transit trip times over one seat rides through big increases in frequency, speed, and reliability. However, there must be institutional and interlocal commitment to the reformed system for it to be successful. Without it, inconsistent road designs and development practices may not allow for the reliable operation of buses. Lacking reliability, the regularity of connections that are the lifeblood of the grid will fail to materialize.

Route truncations will be needed that maximize the grid and guarantee reliability. One example-which presumes that 6th Avenue becomes a street railway-is a truncation of Route 1 at Parkland Transit Center. This allows buses to reverse at a deeply logical terminus and head right back to Tacoma's city center. This would create a nearly 8-mile one-way trip ending at Pacific Avenue / 9th Street. The new line would serve about half of the total Route 1's existing ridership. During peak hours, the Enhanced Bus service would continue to run the entire length of Tacoma Dome to Spanaway Transit Center. Off peak, a separate service of unknown origin and destination would funnel riders between Spanaway and Parkland.

Strategies that ensure reliability should be considered, like a Route 1 truncation at Parkland Transit Center, shown in blue. The Enhanced Bus service, in green, would still operate between Tacoma Dome and Spanaway. A new and undefined service, in red, would replace the Route 1 between Parkland and Spanaway.

For more information on the transit grid and quality transit planning principles in general, please visit the blog of public transit consultant Jarrett Walker, Human Transit.

Expand the Pierce Transit Service Area into Greater Pierce County

Undoing a past error, the Pierce Transit benefit district should be expanded to recover lost portions of service area in urbanized Pierce County. No longer can the county afford to have a large portion of its urban population be either un-served or under served by mass transportation.

Even WSDOT recommends such an expansion in its South Pierce Multimodal Connectivity Study of 2023 (read the report, here). The department confirmed that the County cannot expect to build its way out of congestion through roads alone, stating, future transportation operations will be poor without additional infrastructure investments beyond the baseline improvements, which include only those transportation improvements already funded or very likely to be implemented by 2050". Those baseline projects alone constitute a giant investment in infrastructure and stress the financial capacity of the County. The department further noted that very few transit service, active transportation infrastructure, and safety improvements are funded or likely to be in place by 2050".

Current versus Pre-2012 Pierce Transit Service Area.

The central and southern areas of urbanized Pierce County are densifying, sprawling, and becoming increasingly congested. Existing and new residents are effectively trapped in a cycle of auto dependency and housing affordability, although this toxic relationship is being tested by the rising cost of housing. At least for now, Pierce County has more affordable housing than either King or Snohomish counties. This cost-of-living discrepancy will be reduced (or neutralized) in the future, and the dual housing and transportation crises are a fact that has County planners and political leadership looking for new ways to bend or end the trend. The County's draft comprehensive plan update includes as one of three options for growth a High-Capacity Transit alternative, which would create dense neighborhoods within a half mile of bus rapid transit lines. It would make bigger investments in different types of transportation" and further preserve rural areas and forest lands to help the county prepare for climate change". How the County would accomplish such growth without equally robust transit and supportive infrastructure is unclear. Not limited to Pierce County but all over the United States, the balkanization of our land-use and transit planning bodies will continue to result in unrealizable promises that deliver inferior outcomes.

As noted by WSDOT, the expansion of the transit benefit district is a policy decision that will require further study and either a popular or elected official vote [for these areas] to rejoin". If or when that is accomplished, new frequent buslines should be run along core arterials, allowing riders to easily cross the central portions of the county. Those buslines should be supplemented by feeder routes where practical. These new routes are envisioned in the Pierce County Integrated Transit Plan, particularly along 176th Street and Canyon Road.

Even in the absence of such transit lines, Pierce County should be developing infrastructure projects and land-use policies that presume their operation in the future. Continuing to discount transit as a realistic alternative transportation will commit the county to perpetual, worsening auto-dependency. As historian and sociologist Lewis Mumford famously stated, Adding highway lanes to deal with traffic congestion is like loosening your belt to cure obesity".

Up next: Targeted Improvements