King County Metro Buses on Seattle Street. Image courtesy of Jeanne Clark
Thanks to the voter-approved Seattle Transportation Benefit District Proposition 1 (STBD), we continue to make improvements to bus service & access within Seattle.
In partnership with King County Metro (Metro), we’re serving all corners of the city with more trips. More access to higher frequency service means you get where you need to go when you need to be there. Here’s a look at the STBD accomplishments at a glance:
When STBD began in 2015, only one-quarter of Seattle households enjoyed this level of service. Since then, thanks to STBD and expanded Sound Transit Link light rail service, this number has grown to within 2% of our 2025 goal of 72%. Also, almost 30% of Seattle households have access to two or more routes with this level of service – providing more options to more places.
Almost every neighborhood in the city has at least one route providing 15-minute or better service, & most have at least three.
In 2019 alone, we added seven new routes to the Frequent Transit Network. We define a Frequent Transit Network as bus arrivals of 15 minutes or less for at least 12 hours per day, 6 days per week, and transit service headway of 30 minutes or less for at least 18 hours every day. Today, 34 Metro routes come every 15 minutes (or better) on weekdays and every 30 minutes or better on evenings and weekends, providing better connections in and between some of the city’s fastest-growing neighborhoods.
Since September 2018, STBD has increased its investment in Metro bus service to over 25%, adding over 1,550 new weekly trips on routes throughout the city.
We’ve added over 8,000 weekly trips to the network since 2015. We’ve focused many of these trips on peak travel to and from Downtown providing real travel options during the Seattle Squeeze.
These investments alone have made room for 7,100 riders per day.
Through the ORCA Opportunity program, almost 7,500 Seattle Public School students received a free ORCA card for the 2018-2019 school year.
This year cards distributed through the program were used a total of 1,770,000 times, saving the average student $356 over the entire school year and providing a passport to the city.
Overall, $0.91 of every dollar collected under STBD Proposition 1 goes directly to fund transit service & access improvements!
An additional $0.07 is set aside in a reserve fund, and we only use $0.02 per dollar for planning and analysis.
Want more info? Check out our Year 4 Annual Report.