3 ms·

So that shows fares bring in about $150 million a year. Spread that across the 2 million people living in King County and that's $75 a year for free transit. I

• xyzzyz 7y ago
  If everyone rode the bus 20 times a year, we'd need much more buses, and the cost would rise correspondingly. Today, with fare at $2.75, and farebox recovery of 27%, the cost averages out to $10/ride. That means that for only 20 times a year, you'd need to raise taxes by $200, not $75. Fortunately, most people don't ever ride a bus, so us Seattle taxpayers who subsidize 73% of the cost of the bus system, have much smaller system to support. If more people used it, the cost would be correspondingly higher. The whole problem here is that it is simply very expensive to run buses, per actual ride. Operational costs of a King County Metro buses is ~$150 an hour. With $2.75 fare, you'd practically need to run them crammed full at all times to break even. In reality, buses only get ever fully packed on a handful of routes, and even then only twice a day. And, ST3 passed, but only barely. I don't think it would have passed today if we got to vote on it again.