Whether making cuts or expanding routes and hours, the way in which Metro allocates bus service in King County has a huge impact not only on how we get around town day to day, but on access to education and the economic vitality of communities for generations to come.
King County Metro currently allocates where and when buses go according to its service guidelines, which help ensure that service decisions (increases, cuts, restructuring) are based on transparent and measurable data on ridership, productivity, social equity, and geographic value.
The social equity component of the service guidelines, which gives a certain weight to areas of the county that have higher low-income and minority populations, is especially important given that these communities are historically more dependent on transit and yet disproportionately underserved by transit investments, and already face significant employment and health hurdles. By considering social equity when distributing service, ideally Metro can help ensure that these communities have an affordable way to get to jobs, healthcare, and education.
Access to education in particular can be critical for improving economic opportunity in these areas. Studies have shown that a college degree “quadruples the chances that an individual born into the bottom income quintile will reach the top quintile in adulthood.” A community college degree “increases earnings by an average of $7,900 annually—an earnings increase of 29 percent over those with only a high school diploma.” (Strengthening Community Colleges’ Influence on Economic Mobility, Pew Charitable Trusts.)
Yet, despite Metro’s best efforts to distribute service equitably, some areas of King County are still woefully underserved. Together with OneAmerica and Puget Sound Sage, TCC has created a series of maps that explore transit access to community colleges across King County. The maps show significant “education deserts” – areas where no community colleges are reachable by transit in under 30 minutes – in the Rainier Valley and South King County, which have high densities of communities of color and low-income families.
For instance, the average travel time from Rainier Beach to South Seattle Community College on the bus is approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes, and includes at least one transfer, taking up time that could be otherwise used for studying or working. Of course, the same route by car takes only 18 minutes, but owning a car can be prohibitively expensive for low-income students and families – approximately $9,000 a year compared to $1,080 a year to ride the bus regularly.
At Transportation Choices we are constantly striving to do exactly that – provide Washingtonians affordable and efficient transportation choices for getting around. But we have a lot of work to do: between an hour plus bus ride and pricey car ownership, some students in communities like Rainier Beach don’t have any choice – in many cases, neither option will be viable.
Immigrant families and younger people of color are some of the fastest growing demographics in the county. When we take away their transportation choices, we take away real opportunities for higher education. And when we deprive tomorrow’s work force in this way, the whole county loses.
When King County Executive Dow Constantine vetoed the King County Council’s ordinance to postpone service cuts (without identifying a revenue source for the service restored) earlier this month, he accompanied it with a letter to the Council that chastised the plan for “allocating service hours based on political considerations rather than data and established objective criteria.” The proposal from Council would have arbitrarily saved some unproductive routes, and may have led to additional situations down the road in which the service guidelines could have easily been bypassed in favor of funding service based on political will.
We’re thankful for Executive Constantine’s veto — the Council ordinance as proposed would have undone all the work Metro has done to create guidelines for allocating service equitably. Guidelines that are absolutely necessary in preventing service cuts in the most vulnerable communities in King County. Guidelines that will – someday – bring more and more frequent bus service to these same neighborhoods, helping make community college a viable option, and helping make a real investment in our future leaders.
