Riders brace for commute shakeups as King County Metro 'temporarily suspends' 6 routes
Metro Transit suspends 6 commuter routes mid-June
If you take the bus, you may have to find another way around for a while—that's because King County Metro is temporarily cutting routes.
KING COUNTY, Wash. - King County Metro is suspending six routes due to staffing and bus availability.
The routes impacted are peak commuter lines including 16, 232, 237, 301, 304 and 320 from June 12–23.
The suspensions come just weeks after they warned of a similar situation planned for the fall.
"When we plan these, these changes. We know it really impacts people's lives," said Katie Chalmers with King County Metro.
Public transportation is a service many people rely on. Melissa, a nurse, is one of them. We spoke with her as she ran from one bus to another trying to get home from work.
"It was supposed to be there at 6 and it didn’t show up until 6:30, that’s why I’m catching my bus so late now," Melissa said, barely making it to her next ride.
Reliability is something King County Metro says they're working on.
"We've seen is, is that an increase in the number of times where we're just not able to make a trip, either because there's not a person available to drive it operator available, or there's not a bus that's available to deliver this service," Chalmers said. "So ultimately, that's the issue that we're that we're looking to resolve—is just unavailability, which we can resolve by suspending some service and reducing our offerings sort of on this temporary basis."
The slash has taken riders like John by surprise.
"[I'm] upset and distraught because it’s family and friends," John said. "I'm going to have to find a different way, or I won’t be able to go."
However, it's commuters like Nahom, a student, who catches the 7:30 a.m. bus to Northgate daily who are bracing themselves for the change.
"It’s sad," Nahom said. "It’s going to be really tough for us, too. I'm going to have to wait at least 30 minutes to get the 346, but the 346 as well doesn’t come very often."
Metro Officials say while they understand the situation can be frustrating and discouraging, it's one they don't want to be in.
"Unfortunately, the reality right now is we don't want to overpromise and then have people whose bus doesn't show up," Chalmers said.
Service is running at 95% according to Metro—that’s about 250,000 riders a day. The lines seeing the temporary cuts carry a little less than 800 rides a day. The transportation service says these routes were chosen because there are alternatives.
"It's going to be much harder to commute, It's going to impact our lives in every way," Nahom said.
Commuter’s days may be a little longer or disrupted by the slash, but only temporarily.
"This is a longterm challenge for Metro, the availability workforce, so we just really continue to want to monitor it to provide that predictability," Chalmers said.
Metro is encouraging riders to monitor updates throughout the summer. However, 20 routes will be cut in September.
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