Making transit the best way to travel
This op-ed was originally printed in a special edition of Passenger Transport, the flagship publication of the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), during its annual convention in Boston.
Every weekday, our transit agency’s employees connect more than 300,000 riders to countless destinations in Washington state. But it’s our more than 2 million residents and visitors who truly drive King County Metro.
A year ago, APTA credited Metro for having the second-fastest growing ridership among large transit agencies in the U.S. Since then, even more people are choosing our system and they’re doing so because we’re listening to them and meeting their needs.
Today’s riders need more than a morning trip to the workplace and an evening return to their home. Their essential destinations also include childcare, classes, dry cleaning, family visits, groceries, prescription pick-ups and work schedules that vary day to day.
To provide our customers with the flexibility to get where they need to go, our buses are less focused on rush hours and now provide more options in the evening and on the weekend. Our expanded on-demand services are a needed link to bus and light rail for community members priced out of neighborhoods with existing high-frequency transit corridors. And our water taxis’ new midday sailings are popular with retirees, workers and youth—and tourists, too.
Often, converting lapsed riders and new arrivals into everyday transit customers begins with a special event. When people take Metro to a concert or game to avoid traffic and parking, the experience exceeds their expectations. They start looking for ways to use transit.
Metro’s goal is to be your favorite way to travel—and that begins with ensuring every trip is safe, clean and reliable.
We implemented a “Care and Presence” approach that added not only more transit police and security officers, but also ambassadors and behavioral health specialists. We’ve reduced assaults and drug incidents, while simultaneously providing compassion, referrals and resources to neighbors in need.
Riders see the condition of their bus and their bus stop as a reflection of their own physical safety. Transit infrastructure that is cared for suggests riders are cared for, too. To improve rider confidence and the transit experience, we moved to 24/7 facilities crews and sped up our cleaning response time from weeks to days.
And we achieved more than 99% trip reliability by expanding our hiring, training and mentorship practices. In 2024 and 2025, hundreds of new operators launched a career serving their community while receiving great pay, fantastic benefits and a pension.
Transit uniquely provides the ability to move and the freedom to connect. While Metro’s next hurdle is a challenging local and state financial forecast, we will continue to deliver value for our region. Right now, we are working with community leaders, elected officials and riders to build a shared vision for the years ahead.
Michelle Allison is general manager of King County Metro, the largest transit agency by ridership in the northwestern United States. Metro provides bus, on-demand, paratransit, vanpool and water taxi services, and operates the Seattle Streetcar, Sound Transit Link light rail and Sound Transit Express buses.
I’m with people here. King County fails to properly serve some areas and they don’t seem willing to either. They only take away from those areas!!! I’m really fed up with it and am on the verge of rallying up a strike!
“Today’s riders need more than a morning trip to the workplace and an evening return to their home”
But don’t forget many riders still need this. A lot of your changes are ruining the main reason people use transit…or even travel to begin with.
Great and all, but you have a lot to do to improve the reliability and speed of your routes in suburbs.
Many are too slow and makes commutes very difficult, especially from suburb neighborhoods. Service is also minimal, making it impossible to rely on transit.
Sometimes that will require putting less stops and deviations and taking more direct paths, and have added local service (such as DART, vanpool) to support connections to this confined route. Many routes currently take 30-40 mins to travel a distance that takes under 10 mins by car.
Many people own a car so more park and ride options will be convincing compared to overly complex routes that still fail to cover most neighborhoods in the suburbs.
We also prefer expanded hours and frequency/reliability over direct peak hour service. But if you’re going to remove our peak hour service, these new shorter routes should be fast shuttles and use schedules that minimize transfer time.
And please incentivize punctuality. I understand traffic and other factors impact this, but many buses are regularly late despite a lack of traffic, including those that only have one trip in their scheduled block.
Buses that are more than 5 mins late frustrates riders, especially those who are making transfers or use a stop near the beginning of the route where real time tracking cannot be relied on.
Or update your real time tracking to predict bus lateness as much in advance as possible to warn riders that a bus will be X mins late. In such case, they can adjust their plans to arrive at the stop later.
For high frequency routes this isn’t an issue, but some routes only run every 30-40 mins and suffer from regular lateness, and only certain blocks/operators seem to have this issue while the remaining ones are on time. As drivers continuously switch, you can’t rely on any specific block for long.