Pierce Transit in Washington on the Road to Recovery

Stephen Fesler reports on a proposal to greatly expand transit service in Pierce County, Washington, located south of Seattle and including the cities of Tacoma and Lakewood. "At the center of the current proposal is a massive 13% bus service increase over the course of the next year and a half," writes Fesler. "Pierce Transit anticipates a roll out of three rounds of service improvements that would total 59,000 annual service hours." Those additions follow the recent addition of 16,000 service hours in March.

The work of Pierce Transit to get to this point is notable—after a pre-recession peak in service, the system had to make deep cuts, which "decimated weekend service, curtailed the span of service for weeknights, obliterated frequency, and ravaged countywide coverage on local and express routes," according to Fesler.

The article includes a lot more detail about the additions now being made by Pierce Transit, after years of "frugal spending and buoying sales tax receipts." Fesler's assessment of the proposal: "the overall proposal will put the agency on a stronger footing going forward and begin to mend the public image of an innovative, nimble, and ambitious transit provider."