Over the past month, King County Metro bus ridership has consistently been about 200,000 daily weekday bus riders, a positive and reassuring trend as the region recovers and transit demand grows. On June 1, we marked a new estimated peak for 2022 of nearly 217,000 rides.
Starting June 13, we’re making minor adjustments to planned weekday service levels in response to operator availability. Metro will operate the same routes as today and deliver more than 98% of the originally planned weekday service as we continue to hire and train transit operators to stabilize our workforce.
On June 11, online timetables will be updated to reflect which weekday trips are operating. Before traveling, we encourage customers to check the online timetables or the canceled trips page since some specific weekday trip cancellations will change on June 13. Metro’s Trip Planner app and website also will reflect the available service and downstream data to Google Maps, OneBusAway and other tools will display estimated departure times.
For additional trip cancellations that occur unexpectedly due to no available operator, please subscribe to transit alert emails and texts, or follow our tweets on our Metro Alerts Twitter handle.
Real-time updates that show whether a bus trip is operating, when it’s due to depart, or if it’s been canceled
- Use Text for Departures. Text your bus stop number to 62550 and receive the next bus trips headed their way or a cancellation notice. (Tip: Save 62550 in your phone in advance.)
- Go to “Next departures” on the Puget Sound Trip Planner webpage or the Puget Sound Trip Planner App. Check to see whether your trip is reporting its position and its estimated arrival time.
Hiring part-time drivers, promoting full-time drivers
We continue to recruit, hire and train part-time bus drivers to join Metro. Training is paid, and hourly pay starts at $26.05.
In April and May, 31 new part-time operators joined Metro and 45 part-time operators were promoted to full-time operators. We’re training a new class of part-time operators now and have a new class of 24 full-time operators starting training in just a few weeks. We’re proud to have them on our team as we expand the Metro family!
Hats off to all Metro drivers! They have been through a lot during these days of COVID. Let’s hope driver shortages are ending. Route 240 seems to have a remarkable number of trip cancellations.