Acting upon the recommendations of an Ad-Hoc Committee that included three members of the King County Council, County Executive Dow Constantine Tuesday sent the Council a proposal for February service changes that would cut 169,000 hours of Metro Transit service. The February service reduction would delete 16 bus routes and revise or reduce 32 others. Details are available on Metro’s website.

Proposed February 2015 service changes

• 16 routes deleted: 4, 22, 25, 26, 28, 30, 31, 158, 159, 178, 179, 187, 190, 192, 242, and DART 930.
• 32 routes revised or reduced: 1, 2, 3, 8, 9X, 12, 13, 14, 16, 21, 24, 26X, 27, 28X, 29, 32, 33, 60, 65, 106, 107, 116X, 121, 125, 157, 168, 177, 181, 193X, 197, 271 and DART 901.

The Council already approved a first round of 151,000 hours of service reductions to take effect Sept. 27. Taken together, the two rounds represent cuts to about 10 percent of Metro’s service, or 320,000 hours of the transit agency’s 3.5 million annual hours. Additional service reductions will be examined as part of King County’s upcoming biennial budget process.

If the February 2015 service change proposal is adopted by the Council, and if the Seattle transit initiative is approved by voters in November, the February service cuts will be postponed until June 2015 to provide time for Seattle and any other party to submit Community Mobility Contracts to preserve service. Seattle and others could also contract to restore services slated to be cut Sept. 27.