Deadhead bus service to the Valley not expected to change
July 8, 2009
By Michael Rowe
When most people hear the word “deadhead” they may think of a tie-dye wearing follower of the band Grateful Dead. For transportation planners, though, a “deadhead” is a bus that travels from one location to another without passengers.
King County Metro Route 215 busses are the latter type of deadhead. The busses leave Seattle before the sun rises and are empty except for their drivers when they arrive at the Mt. Si Senior Center around 5:02 a.m. on weekday mornings.
At a Snoqualmie Valley Chamber breakfast on June 10, North Bend Mayor Ken Hearing wondered why these busses have to be empty. The mayor said that there are people who commute to North Bend to work at places like the Factory Outlet Mall and the Nintendo warehouse who would benefit from public transportation.
David Hull, a planner for King County’s Department of Transportation, said that the reason busses deadhead to North Bend and Snoqualmie is that they arrive too early to accommodate most work schedules.
A King County Metro 215 bus drops off passengers in downtown Snoqualmie on June 23.
According to Metro’s Web-site, five Route 215 busses stop in the Valley from about 5-7:30 a.m. on weekdays. The last morning bus leaves the stop at Southeast Ridge Street and Center Boulevard Southeast at 7:30 a.m. In the evening, the 215 makes stops in the Valley from 4:45-7:30 p.m.
The demand for bus service to and from the Valley and the costs of providing those services are also issues. Adding more stops in the Valley would also add several hundred service hours annually, according to Hull.
“The market is not big enough to add service, particularly in our current budget,” Hull said.
Hull said that Metro considered extending its service in the North Bend area to allow for reverse commuters. He said that Metro at one time discussed expanding bus services with one area employer, the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest offices of the U.S. Forest Service in North Bend. However, the bus times would not match work schedules, Hull said.
Commuters would have to spend nearly 12 hours in the Valley before getting a ride back on one of the afternoon busses.
Hull noted that King County Metro has alternatives for commuters that can help people get to areas without as much bus service such as their van pool program.
Hearing said that he still couldn’t understand Metro’s reasoning for sending empty busses to the Valley.
“It doesn’t make fiscal sense,” Hearing said.
Reach reporter Michael Bayless Rowe at mrowe@snovalleystar.com or 392-6434, ext. 248.
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What’s not to understand, Ken? It costs more money to stop and start a bus at a bus stop than to just drive by the stop. It costs more money to drive through a neighborhood to get to a bus stop than to bypass that neighborhood. If only a couple of people are going to use the service, it doesn’t make economic sense. Keep in mind that we’re talking about people riding the bus before 5AM.
As I see it, there are a couple of options. First, there could be a small limited number of stops that would allow people to take the buses that are currently empty. This might get enough passengers to offset the extra cost, but still be a sort of “express” route. Second, the buses could stay in North Bend overnight rather than going back to the central terminal. That would mean that there would be a late service to North Bend, and the first buses leaving in the morning would not have come all the way from downtown.
It would be great if there was enough demand to have frequent 24 hour bus service to North Bend, but until there is, it doesn’t make fiscal sense to force it.