At a meeting of the King County Council this morning, King County Metro staffers outlined Metro’s plans to deal with a major snowstorm in the future. Two years ago, a massive snowstorm all but shut down bus service, with riders waiting hours for buses that were often full when they finally arrived.
Some of the proposals show that Metro has learned from its mistakes. Significantly, the agency now says it will immediately reduce service to 70 core routes called the Emergency Service Network (and encourage people not to take unnecessary trips) rather than try to keep as many routes going as possible. In 2008, one of the biggest reasons for lousy bus service was that Metro didn’t reroute its resources to major arterials that could be easily cleared immediately, even when many buses (particularly electric trolleys) were stuck in their tracks. If a big storm happens this year, Metro will also simplify its snow routes to provide better reliability.
Another improvement: Metro says it will increase coordination with other agencies, particularly the Seattle Department of Transportation, to make sure that major arterials are cleared and accessible to buses.
Unfortunately, Metro won’t have a new radio system ready until 2011 or 2012. In 2008, a lack of reliable radio communications left many bus drivers without clear direction about where to go or what roads were clear. In lieu of better coordination between drivers and their Metro base coordinators, Metro says it has improved its system for communicating with the public, including the Transit Alert system (which sends email alerts about bus service delays, much like Sound Transit’s alert system) and by implementing a new online snow map. As in the 2008 storm, however, services like OneBusAway won’t be able to provide accurate arrival times, because those rely on fixed transponders rather than GPS on buses themselves.
And the new snow plan doesn’t directly address what King County Metro GM Kevin Desmond called the agency’s “Achilles’ heel” in 2009: The fact that about half of Metro’s fleet consists of hinged articulated buses that are hard to manipulate in bad conditions or electric trolleys that have to turn around at the end of their routes, which tend to be on neighborhood streets that aren’t likely to be plowed.
Metro spokeswoman Linda Thielke says the agency will park its articulated (long) electric trolley buses in “less severe snow situations” and use chained hybrid and diesel articulated buses as needed.
