Seattle Transportation Benefit District

Background

Seattle has a Transportation Benefit District which supplements service provided by Metro with services specifically for Seattle. This includes extra service hours, which have dramatically improved frequency on many bus routes, as well as funding for reduced fee transit and capital expenditures for bus lanes, bus priority signals, etc. Since 2014, when the District was established, the number of Seattle households with 10 minute bus service increased from 25% to 70%. 

STBD was originally funded by a combination of $80 vehicle license fees (aka "car tabs") and a .1% city wide sales tax. When the ballot initiative was renewed in 2020, car tabs could not be used as a funding source, and a smaller revenue package was put together with a .15% sales tax. The City should fund this at least back to the same levels it was funded before 2020, and it should replace the sales tax with more progressive revenue sources, possibly including car tabs.

The current funding scheme for STBD expires in 2026, and will need to be renewed. See here for work on renewal.

Seattle Streetcar

Seattle's Department of Transportation (SDOT) owns the Seattle Streetcar, with a line in from the north end of downtown to South Lake Union, and a second unconnected line from the south end of downtown to First Hill and Capitol Hill. Sound Transit has been paying for the operation of the First Hill streetcar line, but that provision is set to expire at the end of 2022, and the city will have to decide whether to continue funding its operating costs. Metro operates both streetcar lines, under contract to SDOT. In addition, SDOT has developed a number of Rapid Ride lines, with more in progress. SDOT has a 20-year Transit Master Plan, last updated in 2016.

Seattle has done planning for a Central Connector streetcar line, that would connect the South Lake Union streetcar with the First Hill streetcar, with a new line running downtown. It has been projected that this would serve more than 20,000 people on an average workday. The project is eligible for Federal funding, but would also require City funding to complete.

More Bus-Only Lanes

Here's a graphic proposal from Move All Sustainably Seattle (MASS). All of these lanes would help tremendously in making buses, our main source of transit, faster and more reliable.

Note that SDOT has just (May 2022) released plans for updating Rainier Ave., and it includes a bus lane, but not both directions the whole way – the bus lane is mostly northbound, with a very short south bound lane. This is for a route that has a RapidRide planned soon, and has buses every 3.5 minutes in the morning commute hours.