Peer Review Shows Challenges For Everett Transit, Blasts Everett Station

March 31, 2015

Everett, Everett Government

stall door

Doors from the bathroom stalls have been removed to discourage drug dealing at Everett Station

transit stall 2As part of his deficit reduction plan, Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson is having several departments within the city reviewed to look for efficiencies. The Everett Fire Department is currently undergoing one such review. Another review was held in December, this one of Everett Transit. The review was conducted by the American Public Transportation Association and took place over several days. The peer review was presented publicly at last week’s Everett City Council meeting. Here are some of the comments from the review panel…

It was not apparent to the panel that there is a long term City vision for the future service direction of Everett Transit that staff could identify with. Consequently Everett Transit appears to be waiting for things to happen and consequently transit functions are largely focused on survival.

The benefits derived through inter-agency supportive services that have been developed in partnership with Community Transit do not appear to be fully understood by all relevant stakeholders. This has resulted in stakeholders not fully appreciating the benefits of what has been put into place through this partnership and therefore not realizing additional benefits that could be achieved from what might be developed in the future. While much transit service information has been provided by Everett Transit staff to stakeholders, the message regarding rationale and positive outcomes of service decisions does not appear to be adequately understood. Communication of service decisions consequently appears to be a clear issue and a continuing challenge for all concerned.

Everett Transit is facing multiple challenges with respect to its various facilities. In the view of the panel, the Everett Station is a great community and regional facility that is not living up to its potential of being a welcoming point of entry to the City of Everett. General signage of the station is inadequate, way-finding is a challenge, and insufficient approaches to security have led to loitering and a general sense that the facility is an unsafe environment. Local police presence at Everett Station is not apparent on a regular basis and negative conditions have led to unwanted reactive actions including the removal of doors from the public restroom toilet stalls.

Although the facility is the property of Everett Transit, it is managed on behalf of Everett Transit through the City’s Property Management group. Based on the panel’s understanding, the facility management costs and revenue shortfalls for the facility are borne by Everett Transit. There appears to be restrictions on Everett Transit as to the ability to attract tenants which includes a belief that reaching out to businesses to locate at Everett Station would generate conflict with local private developers. It is obvious that parking is critical to the success of Everett Station, however, in the view of the panel, parking in the station vicinity is inadequate.

The is a lot more in the report including praise for leaders of Everett Transit for doing a lot with a little. Tom Hingson, director of Everett Transit told the council members progress is being made on the recommendations. If you’d like to see the report for yourself it’s hard to find, but the report is on the new Everett Transit website here. While the City of Everett has reduced a large part of its deficit there is still a projected shortage of millions of dollars between now and 2017 unless revenues increase or cuts are made to more of Everett’s expenses.

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