I will candidly admit I've only had 5 years of context, but in those 5 years, while bus ridership may be increasing, my perception has not been that it's propor

I will candidly admit I've only had 5 years of context, but in those 5 years, while bus ridership may be increasing, my perception has not been that it's proportional to population growth, and a brief look at the data seems to back this up. (comparing % growth of ridership to % growth in population over the last 10~ years) [0][1] I don't want to come across as to criticize growth and progress, I don't have enough knowledge on what was done to address that. I just don't find the results to be sufficient; as you said, population growth is a huge factor, and that's what renders this a pressing issue. I agree that we're probably paying for a lack of investment; to the point of my comparison with Philadelphia where the infrastructure was in place. I'd reference my other comment questioning governance, since while you say a few notable but not critical exceptions, I find massive build-out times (Overlake Transit Center, for instance, will be closed until 2023, assuming I'm not confusing dates), lack of funding (discussed this issue at a local city council meeting, apparently it's partly a state/federal problem), and mismanagement (see other comment) to be quite prevelent. I may well be seeing a small slice of this, but my slice's commute is looking anywhere but up, even considering future development. I'd also add that I didn't ignore that it takes an hour in the car. I'd agree, it takes an hour in a car. But you're in your own car, which many people see as a positive despite the mental overhead of driving, and that's still less time, variance, and inconvenience than the bus. I can only speak to the # of cars I see in the lots at work, these are clearly sufficient dis-incentives to the bus as it currently exists, and we can't ignore that if we want to improve the situation. (I'd also note that your mention of "less than 5 miles of downtown" makes me think we may be looking at very different strata of things; perhaps I should have said initially "Seattle Area", the trains I was referring to in Philly go 20+ miles out in many directions) [0]https://www.kingcounty.gov/independent/forecasting/King%20County%20Economic%20Indicators/KC%20Population.aspx https://www.kingcounty.gov/independent/forecasting/King%20Co... [1]https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Qyj31NiW1kc30GX9PCNrmnAn_EEmPn8WaUB_NMkYCQE/pubhtml https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Qyj31NiW1kc30GX9PCNr...