King County Metro plans to incrementally increase passenger limits during the next six months. The approach comes as the number of vaccinated residents continues to increase, eligibility for vaccines expands to everyone 16 and older on April 15, and King County entered Phase 3 of the “Healthy Washington – Roadmap to Recovery” plan on March 22.
On April 17, we will modify our passenger limits to 40% of pre-COVID capacity (50% of seated capacity). This means the passenger limit will move from 12 to 20 customers on our 40-foot buses, and from 18 to 30 customers on our 60-foot buses. We also will make similar passenger limit updates on our other modes. This increase in load limits is in step with other transit agencies and in line with Gov. Inslee’s guidance for public transit agencies.
We will continue to maintain and strengthen our safety protocols, and to carefully monitor public health guidance and other safety measures in the weeks and months ahead. If conditions allow, our intent is to increase our capacity limits to 70% of pre-COVID levels in early July, or earlier if our county enters Phase 4 sooner. We would then aim to retire reduced capacity levels prior to the service change on October 2.
Metro also encourages those who are already eligible and everyone else who will become eligible on April 15 to get their vaccination. Learn more at Public Health – Seattle & King County’s “Getting Vaccinated in King County.”
After you make a reservation, please read Metro’s “Take Transit to Take Your Shot: Here are ways to get to your vaccination appointment.”
Metro is also coordinating a vaccination clinic this month for King County government essential workers. We remain hugely grateful to essential workers for serving our communities and keeping our region moving.
Editor’s note: The date of the fall 2021 service change was updated.
Please bring back the Normandy Park Community Ride. Our seniors are now mainly vaccinated and ready to travel to more places. This shuttle only takes a few people at a time, so there is not any crowding problem. We miss this shuttle and would like to have it back!
When capacity increases unmasked riders should be banned from riding and if they refuse removed by metro police. Otherwise it’s going to be unsafe with the people who refuse to get vaccinated riding maskless.
How do you ban them? The driver can only do so much to enforce the policy. By the time Metro police can respond, the offending rider has left the bus. Have you ridden the #7 bus lately?
I agree with both of these comments. I work in the Eastake neighborhood and use route 70 and route 36 to commute home from work. When I board the southbound route 36 at 3rd Ave/Pine St. between 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM, the 40′ trolley buses routinely hit the 12 person capacity limit within the first 2 stops, yet most of the drivers continue picking up passengers even if nobody’s getting off at that stop. Not only that, ridership on this route isn’t 1 on = 1 off. It’s more like 1 person on = 5 or more people boarding at the stop, which quickly puts the bus way over the 12 passenger limit. Otten the bus is so full that by the time it reaches the 5th Ave/S. Jackson St. stop by Union Station, there are people in every seat AND multiple people standing in the aisles. When I count them, this means the bus has about 20 or more people in it.
Also, route 36 and route 70 fill up quickly because approximately half of the riders are homeless people who are just joyriding and loitering at other stops rather than actually walking to a specific destination when they get off. Most of them either aren’t wearing masks at all or don’t wear them correctly, yet the drivers let them on anyway and make no effort to enforce the mask and social distanicing rules. You really need to add more trips to these routes and have security to both monitor passsenger counts and mask compliance.
Finally, hasn’t it occurred to you that with Amazon’s plans to start bringing workers back to their downtown campus, you’re going to need A LOT more route 70 trips? Pre-COVID, it was common for route 70 trips to be standing room only because so many of the passengers were going to Amazon and SCCA. 50% capacity isn’t going to be enough once heavily used destinations such as Amazon, SCCA, and UW start opening up (which incidentally, are all destinations route 70 serves).
I think this is way too early. As Samon mentioned buses are already past capacity. Washington is experiencing an uptick in cases including areas in north Seattle. Homeless people that ride free are less likely to have access to information on vaccines and often don’t wear a mask. Not all bus drivers enforce mask wearing.
Access to vaccines isn’t easy yet. It will still be a while before a significant portion of the population gets vaccinated and even fully vaccinated.
I applaud everything Metro has done during this time period and I’m grateful. This decision though is premature and definitely decreases my confidence in Metro.
Metro has already been increasing passengers on the busses! The drivers have been having people standing past capacity level way BACK months ago! YOU obviously have NOT been monitoring as MANY Metro drivers have NOT been following the capacity level they are supposed to be following now! So why start increasing now when it is so obvious that it has already been an issue? Look at routes Rapid Line D and E and Routes 3 and 4 in the evenings…too name a few!