With COVID-19 taking a toll on Pierce Transit, it’s time to rethink how we fund it
We’ve been down a road like this before.
It didn’t lead anywhere good, and it took us far too long to get back to anywhere close to where we started.
It began with a crisis, was compounded by some Pierce County communities failing to see the value in public transit, and ultimately resulted in years of trying to climb out of a ditch.
From 2008-11 Pierce Transit was forced to cut 30% of its fixed routes, the result of the Great Recession, plummeting sales tax revenue and rural voters’ continued refusal to approve ballot measures funding transit.
Then, a 2012 boundary reduction further compounded the problem, eliminating service in communities that had voted to remove themselves from the Pierce Transit service area.
The results were predictably painful: Those who desperately rely on public transit — the poor, the disabled, senior citizens, students, or simply those who want to be able to get where they need to go without relying on a car — were disproportionately impacted by the loss.
The good news is that In 2015, Pierce Transit began slowly clawing its way back. In recent years the agency has worked to redesign its system to focus on efficiently serving the most riders possible, and has made significant strides toward restoring needed service.
The bad news?
The reality and financial implications of the COVID-19 pandemic mean Pierce Transit riders should be preparing for another bumpy ride, while our community and its leaders should be planning for ways to mitigate the negative impacts and prepare for an uncertain transit future.
It won’t be easy. Even if the current crisis doesn’t reach Great Recession levels, there’s a potential for COVID-19-related cuts to be deep and lasting without creative, proactive local response.
According to Pierce Transit spokesperson Rebecca Japhet, in September the agency hopes to roll out a service package that would cut service by 10% compared with where things stood in March, before the coronavirus crisis hit.
It’s a forecast buoyed by optimism, Japhet acknowledged. At the same time, all public transportation cuts hurt, and even just a 10% reduction — if Pierce Transit can limit it to that — would mean a loss of 50,000 service hours. Pierce Transit would go from roughly 500,000 service hours before the coronavirus to 450,000 in September.
“Ten percent is not as bad as we anticipated, but that doesn’t matter to the individual who lost their route,” said Tacoma City Council member Kristina Walker, who also serves as executive director of the transportation advocacy nonprofit, Downtown on the Go.
Lessening the blow, at least in the short term, the agency received more than $20 million in emergency funding from the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act — or CARES Act — which is helping to offset the losses, Japhet said.
Otherwise, it could have been worse.
“The real question mark will come in 2021,” Japhet warned. “In 2021, we don’t know if additional federal funds will be available, and we don’t know what our local economy — and related sales tax, which provides the majority of our funding — will look like.”
As The News Tribune has previously reported, Pierce Transit’s current budget outlook is certainly concerning. The agency’s revenue projections for 2020 foresee up to a $47 million loss — due to a pandemic-related loss of ridership and sales tax revenue.
Sales tax alone makes up about 60% of the budget, according to the agency, and those collections are expected to fall by roughly $28 million this year.
“Nobody really saw it coming, as far as what the impact was going to be. It’s like we fell off a cliff, as far as our revenue” said Brett Freshwaters, Pierce Transit’s executive director of finance, of the challenge presented by the coronavirus crisis.
Already Pierce Transit has been forced to make quick, drastic changes that have undoubtedly affected people’s lives. In the weeks after the pandemic took hold, service was cut by 38% compared with pre-COVID-19 levels. In late May, some of that was restored — though the agency is still operating at a 20% reduction.
At the same time, ridership has plunged. On weekdays, there are now about half as many riders as there were before the coronavirus changed everything.
The 10% service cut could end up being more or less
Japhet stressed that the projected 10% service reduction for September is just that — a projection.
Pierce Transit, she said, “won’t know for sure until we get recent sales tax figures, which we expect later this summer.”
“If projections do not hold, we may need to make adjustments to the September service levels,” Japhet cautioned.
This brings us back to the question of what can be done to help — right now, and in the future.
While there had been talk of a potential ballot measure in 2020 to increase sales taxes to fund Pierce Transit prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, that now seems unlikely.
In fact, if this experience has reminded us of anything, it’s that relying so heavily on a sales tax to fund public transit is precarious in the best of times, and potentially catastrophic in times of crisis.
Given the importance of local public transit and the uncertain future, Walker said it’s long past time to consider a funding mechanism for public transportation that’s not as reliant on sales tax revenue.
“We really need to rethink how transit is funded. Assuming Pierce Transit is not going to the ballot for a sales tax increase, transit income is not going to go up and it’s tied to sales tax in such a strong way that we can’t get ahead of the need,” Walker said. “The more people are without work, the more we need transit, the less people spend, the less transit available.
“We have to restructure the way we fund transit if it’s going to really support our community in the way we envision,” Walker added.
Former City Council member Ryan Mello, another longtime public transit advocate, agreed that the current crisis should inspire a community conversation about better ways to fund public transit.
Mello also pointed to the need for creative solutions, like the transportation money that was included in the Tacoma Creates ballot initiative, which helped provide ORCA cards to Tacoma high school students.
“More of this kind of thinking would be helpful,” Mello said. “If more businesses, schools and institutions purchased unlimited ORCA cards for their students or workers, that revenue would be quite helpful to supplement sales tax.”
“Any downturn in the economy disproportionately impacts transit-dependent riders the most, when they most need it,” Mello added.
That’s the truth — and the challenge.
If the Great Recession taught us anything it’s that how we respond will have a significant impact on individuals and families for years to come.
