Gig Harbor gets on the bus

More people are commuting via mass transit, but Pierce Transit lacks the funds to expand services

Paige Richmond

of the Gateway

Just before 8 a.m. on a weekday morning, a dozen people are lined up to catch the bus at the Kimball Drive Park & Ride. They’re all waiting for Pierce Transit Route 102, an express bus that will take passengers across the new Narrows bridge and into downtown Tacoma for $1.50. Damon Joyner has been taking that bus daily since moving to Gig Harbor last December. He thinks having a consistent schedule and not having to pay a toll on the bridge makes mass transit the best way to commute.

“It’s fantastic,” he said. “My wife knows exactly when to expect me home for dinner.”

Joyner isn’t the only Gig Harbor resident who holds bus travel in such high regard. Some of his fellow commuters have seen in upswing in ridership since this summer, when gas prices hit $4 per gallon.

Riders like Robert and Naomi DePan — a married couple who commute daily to Tacoma — now see three times as many passengers on their morning ride as they did a few months ago.

“It gets more and more crowded every day,” said Robert DePan, who has been taking the same bus for three years. He remembers eight to 10 riders on the 40-person bus in July; now, 25 to 30 people fill those seats.

Even Route 102 bus driver Vicky Smith has seen more people filling her bus lately. After picking up all the passengers at the Kimball Park & Ride stop, her Pierce Transit bus is almost standing-room-only.

The numbers match up with riders’ observations: Between 2006-07, ridership on Route 102 has increased from 46,000 to 52,000. From January to August this year, Route 102 has already seen 41,000 riders — nearly as many passengers seen in all of 2006.

“The increase in ridership this year has been dramatic,” said Lars Erickson, a public relations officer for Pierce Transit, who added that Pierce Transit has seen consistent growth in passengers in the past five years.

But that growth is no guarantee that Pierce Transit will bring more buses and more frequent routes to Gig Harbor by 2009. It’s unlikely that more routes or buses will be added in the Gig Harbor area when the Pierce Transit Board reviews its budget this year.

In fact, it’s possible the Key Peninsula area will have its bus service eliminated.

“The ability to expand transit is a bigger challenge than ever, and it comes at the worst time,” said Terry Lee, Pierce County Council chair and member of the Pierce Transit Board of Commissioners. “We’re not able to reach out and include more areas.”

The problem comes down to money. Pierce Transit is funded 70 percent by sales tax, which is down significantly this year due to a sluggish economy. Pierce Transit’s 2008 budget was almost $197 million; there is currently a projected shortfall of $7.4 million for 2009.

Without that money, it’s hard enough to fund already-existing services, let alone pay for more.

“Any expansion, given our current budget situation and where we are, is something we’d have to consider very carefully,” Erikson said.

The situation gets more complicated when more people are getting on the bus.

“The high cost of gas and the high level of congestion are probably transit’s best friends,” Lee said. “Ridership is up, but the challenge is that revenues are down.”

Some Pierce Transit services will have to be cut next year to make up for lower revenue. Lee said the Key Peninsula’s Bus PLUS routes could be on the chopping block, because the program is expensive.

That high cost comes from the type of service Bus PLUS provides. It’s a limited bus service that operates on both regular schedules and by request, allowing riders to call a customer service line and ask the bus to arrive at a designated stop a certain time.

Without requests, the bus stops only once — in Purdy, Wauna, Key Center, Elgin-Clifton and Home on Route 113 — every two hours.

Lee said one reason so few people ride Bus PLUS is because the Key Peninsula is a rural area, and traditionally, rural areas see very low ridership. Only 13,000 took that route last year.

There’s also very little industry on the Key Peninsula, so most people aren’t looking to commute to work via bus. Residents tend to work and live in close proximity to each other — or they can afford a car for transportation.

“There’s no industry and not much opportunity for it. What industry there is supports rural, residential lifestyles,” said Lee, who added that he doubts a job-based economy could sprout up on the peninsula any time soon.

Even though Gig Harbor is a more of an urban area than the peninsula, it’s still not urban enough to warrant additional bus service. Most of Pierce Transit’s budget is used in high-traffic areas like Tacoma.

Routes 101 and 102 “have been characterized in the past as non-productive routes,” Lee said. According to Pierce Transit, the two routes are in the lowest 25 percent of ridership.

Some bus riders, like daily commuter Brian Johnson, disagree with that characterization. He rides Route 100 to the Tacoma Community College campus in downtown Tacoma, and he’s seen more people riding his bus — something he attributes to inconvenient and infrequent schedules by Pierce Transit.

Johnson, a student, has a 9:30 a.m. class at TCC most days of the week. Since Route 100 runs only once per hour, he has to catch the 8:07 a.m. bus from the Kimball Park & Ride to make it to school in time.

He arrives almost an hour early for class. If he took the next bus — which leaves Kimball Park & Ride at 9:07 a.m. — he’d end up 15 minutes late.

Changing the bus schedule to run every 30 minutes “would be nicer,” he said.

Joyner and the DePans agree that they’d benefit from more frequent bus service, since Route 102 runs hourly to Tacoma each morning and twice per hour in the afternoon.

“Ideally, there would be more options,” Joyner said.

While those options won’t be available in the near future, bus commuters may see some changes two years from now. Currently, Pierce Transit is designing a new Park & Ride next to the old Stroh’s Field. With a $27.4 million price tag, the project would build 180 to 224 new parking stalls and a new pedestrian bridge that would connect to the Kimball Drive Park & Ride by fall 2010.

There’s also a possibility that more stops could be added to existing routes once the new Park & Ride is built, but those decisions are far into the future, Erickson said.

The City of Gig Harbor has been discussing its own bus service, called a Town Around Bus, which would serve various locations inside city limits. Lee met with city officials last month to discuss the idea, which was originally floated when Mayor Gretchen Wilbert was in office.

While there are no guarantees the bus will ever materialize, Lee said there’s more interest now for a Town Around Bus than there’s ever been.

For now, the same goes for Pierce Transit: More people might be getting on the bus, but it will be a slow ride before anything changes.

By the numbers

Ridership on Pierce Transit has gone up dramatically this year. A common industry gauge of measuring public transportation performance is calculating Passengers per Service Hour (PSH), or the number of passenger boardings during one hour of service. PSH is calculated by dividing the total number of passenger boardings by the number of service hours on a system, or by route.

Pierce Transit Overall:

2006 total ridership: 13,642,000

2007 total ridership: 14,520,000

2008 (January to August) ridership: 10,822,000

2008 (January to August) Local and Express PSH: 23.6

2008 (January to August) Bus PLUS PSH: 4.6

PT Local Route 100

2006 total ridership: 108,000

2007 total ridership: 115,000

2008 (January to August) ridership: 88,000

2008 (January to August) PSH: 11

PT Express Route 102

2006 total ridership: 46,000

2007 total ridership: 52,000

2008 (January to August) ridership: 41,000

2008 (January to August) PSH: 11.2

Bus PLUS Route 113

2006 total ridership: 11,000

2007 total ridership: 13,000

2008 (January to August) ridership: 11,000

2008 (January to August) PSH: 4.5

Changes to Sound Transit

Next year could see expansion to Sound Transit — the Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority, which serves Pierce, King and Snohomish counties — depending on what voters decide next month.

A $17.9 billion-per-year expansion proposal on the Nov. 4 ballot would add a 7 percent increase in bus service beginning in 2009, 65 percent more Tacoma-Seattle commuter rail capacity, 36 new miles of light rail and improved Park & Rides throughout the region.

In order to fund the proposal, Sound Transit would increase sales tax by five-tenths of 1 percent (0.5 percent), or five cents on a $10 retail purchase.

But that’s only for residents within the Sound Transit District — which excludes Gig Harbor residents and anyone else living on the west side of the Narrows bridges. That means the measure won’t appear on Gig Harbor residents’ ballots.

Right now, there’s only one ST Express bus that comes to Gig Harbor: Route 595, which goes straight from Gig Harbor to Seattle each morning and back again each evening. No word on whether that bus service will increase if the proposal is passed.

For more details, visit future.soundtransit.org.

Reach reporter and columnist Paige Richmond at 253-853-9243 or by e-mail at paige.richmond@gateline.com.