Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Saturday, October 15, 1988
Soapbox
Metro Could Bend To Increase Ridership
by Ken Akiva Segan
As our city goes through the difficulties associated with an increasing population, urban growth and its shadow congestion, a re-examination of Metro Transit’s current and proposed changes is urgently needed.
Our city is choking more and more on stagnant and polluted air. Yet while mass transit still represents the most effective and clean method for us to commute to our workplaces and to our social and recreational activities, what we have is a declining ridership, a disillusioned staff of hard-working drivers and support staff, and an economic red herring.
Declining ridership is the main problem. What are the contributors?
Periodic fare increases that hut most the riders who depend on the buses for transit, but that are more manageable by the middle-class commuter.
Declining service in the form of chaotic scheduling, tardiness and breakdowns.
A growing public perception that the buses are unsafe. There is physical and verbal harassment of drivers and passengers by some other passengers, fights between passengers (most often drunks downtown, on routes I ride) actual assaults and the fear of such.
I recommend the following two changes are real options to continuing the status quo. First, cut the fares substantially to a rate that increases ridership. That would serve not only to recoup the lost passengers of recent years, but to capture new riders.
How is this possible in the face of declining revenues?
Metro needs more riders, and needs them more than ever. The loss per fare would be offset by the increase in ridership. Metro needs to restore public faith in a battered transit system. Fare reductions have the potential not only to gain those new allegiances, but to get the wheels rolling on other high-priority issues. The system also needs to rejuvenate employee morale, generate more government funding for mass transit, seek bus designs that use less space and energy and solve scheduling problems that make the riders irritable and frustrated.
Why doesn’t Metro charge a fare of 25 cents for all children and youths through the age of 18? Youngsters already are under severe social and economic pressures – especially those outside white mainstream of educational, corporate and suburban “success.” Black, Hispanic, immigrants from southeast Asia and elsewhere, working-class or outright poor youths have little or no incentive to bus it when the “real drive” is to get wheels. But they need and deserve a transit system they can afford.
Let me rephrase an outrageous but true analysis I heard last year. Anyone who’s still riding the bus at age 21 (or try substituting 25, 30 or 38 – my age) hasn’t “made it.” Success has just passed them by, and these young adults know it as sure as I’m Ken Segan. They need a price incentive that makes sense in a society where the car represents mobility, power and prestige.
Metro wants a one-zone adult peak fare of 75 cents (up from 65 cents) and a two-zone peak fare at $.1.25 (up from $1). All other fares are to remain the same. I would lower the fare across-the-board to a flat 50 cents per trip. Seniors, the handicapped and youth would continue to retain the special rates they already have or that which I propose above.
Why not give Seattle riders a transit system which is cost-effective, popular and one that could be a role model for other cities in the same boat?
My second recommendation concerns security. Eliminate all plainclothes officers. Suit ‘em up in uniform. The public is concerned about how safe we are (and you can be certain folks don’t continue riding if they have the option of driving or car pooling if they feel threatened at all). Metro needs the most visible method to reassure us that security is there when it’s needed. Highly visible officers riding the buses, dealing with problem situations in an effective and orderly manner while providing a visible yet unobtrusive presence – that will reassure the riding public and let the troublemaker know that it’s not wild in the aisle on route 66.
Fear of personal safety knows no color line, no age range, no gender gap or religious or ethnic difference. People want to know that the police are there when we need them and I’d recommend as an extra presence that non-Metro police officers who commute to and from work via Metro do so in uniform. New York City instituted this for their non-transit police officers during a period of peak bus and subway crime in the ‘70s – and it worked to a very effective degree.
I guarantee this will have a pronounced and desired effect of making the buses safer for everyone – or I’ll eat my rain hat in front of Metro’s customer assistance office at Fourth and Seneca. And they can call out the press if they want.
Ken Akiva Segan is a Seattle librarian who rides the bus.
Soapbox columns are contributed by readers.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Letters-to-the-Editor, February 1989
Agency headed in wrong direction with fare increase
Among the proposals I suggested in my Oct. 15, 1988, Soapbox (“Metro could bend to increase ridership”) was that Metro ought to reduce fare to recapture its lost ridership of the past few years and gain new riders in the process.
Not only would this bring in greater income than the proposed fare increase (as initially proposed in the spring of 1988), it would invigorate a transit system plagued by low employee morale, security problems and chaotic services in construction zones.
With the first fare increases in four years now a reality (“Bus fare increase could cause 300,000 fewer passengers trips,” Jan. 26) the agency’s own spokesman makes Metro lok more foolish than ever.
I propose that Metro Council members lacking the wherewithal and common sense to revoke the increase (which is guaranteed to make Metro’s losses far worse and the city’s congestion greater) then they should all resign. Lacking the vision to do that, the city and county should fire them – and appoint directors who can add 2 + 2 and who ride the bus.
Ken Akiva Segan
Seattle