Fares Still Free But Less Bus Service Coming From Community Transit

Fewer routes, more time between runs as Community Transit reduces service due to decreased ridership. Here’s the announcement released today.

Community Transit will further reduce bus trips on Monday, April 13 to align with current ridership levels during the COVID-19 pandemic. The agency’s new reduced service schedule will represent a total reduction of approximately 30% over regular bus service levels.

“Transit remains essential for many in our community who are working critical front line jobs,” said Community Transit CEO Emmett Heath. “During this crisis, a number of bus trips are seeing little or no ridership at certain times of the day, so we are temporarily canceling some of those trips to operate more efficiently and focus on routes that riders are using for essential travel.”

Last week Community Transit’s total boardings were down 71% when compared to February 2020.

Service Reduction

Key features of the plan include:

· All trips on Route 247 (Stanwood to Boeing) will be canceled due to several days of no ridership.
· The following routes will reduce to one trip in each direction due to very low ridership: Routes 107, 227, 412, 435 & 821.
· Commuter service to downtown Seattle (Community Transit 400-series routes and all ST routes) will remain at current levels, except for Routes 412 and 435 mentioned above.
· Commuter service to the University of Washington (Community Transit 800-series routes) will have substantial trip cuts due to low ridership.
· Across routes, the span of service hours and frequency of trips will be reduced. There will be longer gaps between trips but the reduced service schedule should cut down on the number of unplanned daily canceled trips related to staffing levels.
· Buses remain on regular schedule Saturday & Sunday.
· In accordance with the Governor’s Stay Home, Stay Healthy emergency order, transit should be used for essential trips only.
· Passengers should board and exit Community Transit buses through the rear doors only. The front door will remain accessible for ADA customers only. The front 10 feet of all buses will be available for bus drivers and ADA customers only.
· Community Transit has suspended the collection of fares through April 30.

Further details of the service reduction will be released later this week as agency planning staff complete their work. A complete listing of all trips that are not running will be updated at www.communitytransit.org/reducedservice by Friday, April 10.