As King County Metro continues to provide service for essential trips only, we remain committed to making transit as safe and reliable as possible.
Realizing that Metro’s reduced schedule and passenger limits have made commuting more challenging for some essential workers, we recently reduced the minimum number of riders for our Vanpool program to two people. Also, for customers with disabilities who are essential workers or are making essential trips, we’ve expanded eligibility for our Metro Access program.
Trips added on high-demand routes
Based on operator availability, we are dedicating roughly 15 additional buses starting today to six routes where coaches are either reaching capacity or passing up customers to maintain social distancing guidelines. These high-demand routes include:
- Route 7
- Route 36
- Route 180
- RapidRide A
- RapidRide D
- RapidRide E
The buses have been added on weekdays between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m., as that period has the highest ridership and most reports of pass-ups. Metro will continue to monitor all routes and time frames, and may further modify or expand standby support . We’re also looking at how best to address reports of sporadic pass-ups on weekdays and weekends from 5-9 a.m.
New seat signs support social distancing
To support public health and passenger safety, we’re installing additional social distancing reminders across the transit network. Starting this week, passengers will begin to see seat signs that provide a visual cue to stay apart from other passengers. The signs read, “Seat Closed,” and, “For your safety, this seat is closed to support social distancing between our passengers.”
These waterproof, synthetic paper signs are designed to sustain daily disinfecting procedures and to sit flush on seatbacks as not to inhibit family members’ ability to sit near each other during essential trips. The signs feature a symbol as well as large-font text to be understandable to customers who are linguistically diverse or have low vision.
While it will take roughly two weeks to roll out seat signs across the entire fleet, passengers making essential trips will see the new visual cues on:
- City of Seattle Streetcar
- Metro buses
- Metro Water Taxi
- Sound Transit buses
- Sound Transit Link Light Rail
No fares through May 31
Metro extended its suspension of fares at least through the end of May.
As a reminder, customers taking essential trips on transit should:
- Visit the Reduced Schedule page to ensure their route is operating.
- Check the Canceled Trips page and use Text for Departure to confirm the status of their specific trip.
- Allow extra time in case their first-choice trip is already at capacity.
Please continue to keep yourself, other passengers, and our employees safe:
- Stay home if you are sick.
- Wear a face covering when traveling.
- Wash your hands often and use sanitizer.
- Cover your cough or sneeze.
- Stay as far apart as possible from other people.
Additional Resources
- King County Metro Transit
- Public Health
- Other King County services
I am concerned with the number of people I see on buses still without at mask or face covering. This is unacceptable as it is compromising the safety of drivers and other passengers (many of which are essential workers). Signs are clearly posted. Can Metro add a prerecorded audio about masks, or add some additional strategies to increase compliance? There is no excuse for riding a bus without a mask/ face covering at this point.
Today I boarded the southbound route 70 bus that leaves Eastlake Ave.E./E. Lynn St. at 2:45 PM and got to the 3rd Ave/Pine St. stop just after 3 PM. I transferred to a southbound route 36 bus (coach #4360) at that stop. Approximately 8 people boarded at that stop, then approximately 3 more boarded at the Benaroya Hall stop. This was a non-articulated bus, so the bus was already almost at capacity despite only being 2 stops into its trip. However, the driver continued picking up passengers all the way down 3rd Ave. and up to the 12th Ave..S/S. Jackson St. stop despite the fact nobody was getting off at most of the stops. By the time the bus got to 12th Ave.S/S. Jackson St., there were AT LEAST 18 passengers on the bus. Every seat was occupied and several passengers were standing in the aisle, yet the driver never put on the “sorry, coach full” sign or stopped picking up passengers.
Come on, Metro, if you have a bus that’s so full every available seat is occupied AND people standing in the aisles, that’s an obvious sign your bus is over the capacity limits and needs to start passing up stops! In addition, if this is happening every day, you also need to add more service during that time of day!
A lot of my coworkers also take Metro to work. We’re all getting disgusted with buses being so full that they’re bypassing essential workers or drivers who let homeless joyriders use the buses as rolling shelters even if the bus is at maximum capacity and is a route that carries a lot of essential workers. My friends and I are at the point where we all want Metro to resume fare collection as a way of keeping non-destinational, non-essential riders off. Many of the essential workers using mass transit get subsidized ORCA cards through their employers, so it seems like it should be possible for Metro to use the ORCA database to identify cardholders who work at essential companies and create some type of ID card that those people can use for priority boarding on routes that are prone to overcrowding.
Mi nombre es Maribel y agarro el bus 903 que va a Federal way a las 5:00 am que va a pasar cuando la gente empiece a trabajar si sólo dejan subir a 4 personas en esta ruta y aún. así los choferes aveces son muy irresponsables no pasan a su hora indicada andan pasando de 15 a 20minutos tarde
please, can anybody tell me why I have to pay a fare? every time I have to walk 2.5 miles just to ride the bus just because one day those stupid people running metro decided to cancel the bus route close to my house…what a stupid decision for their part !!
I have been complaining about the 903 route for weeks, with no response from Metro. They arbitrarily started only taking 4 passengers on the small bus for the first run of the morning.
This bus services an otherwise transit desert in Federal Way and at 5:00am, there are just essential riders. I was the 5th person every day, but despite Metro’s own rules, am getting left at the bus stop a couple times a week now.
This route should have more frequent runs in the morning and the first run should be a large bus to accommodate the passengers.
Becoming very frustrating, especially showing up late for my job in healthcare.
Thanks Dart Metro for not taking care of your customers.
The first runs of the 193, both northbound in the morning and southbound in the afternoon are still pretty full. It’s always been overloaded. Less so now. But most folks riding are medical people. I’m not bussing because I can get parking from my medical workplace. But that will end at the end of May. Any chance we can get another bus for that first run? More people will need to ride, and if a 60 foot articulated bus can only take 18 people, that will not be enough.
Sanitize the buses! I use the buses to get to WORK with the ELDERLY!
Some government officials need to pay this guy to start making masks for their non-medical front-line workers like the bus drivers and grocery workers, etc. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/in-the-early-days-of-the-pandemic-the-us-government-turned-down-an-offer-to-manufacture-millions-of-n95-masks-in-america/ar-BB13Qqsv
I have noticed since the reduction started the buses are not full. There is space and people are making sure they are not to close to others. However when there is more cuts being made it means more people are getting on one bus and can’t distance themselves as easily.
I noticed this when the 193 was cut a few weeks ago. Now that all the buses for 193 are operating there is a lot of space between people. Thank you for allowing all of 193 routs to continue.
I don’t think blocking seats with signs is going to help with social distancing. The real issue is that you need to start restoring the early morning bus trips that have been cut during the COVID-19 shutdown. I ride the northbound route 70 bus that leaves 5th Ave/S. Jackson St. at 5:47 AM. Now that the construction workers are starting to return to work, the buses that use this stop have a lot more people than before. For instance, now the route 70 bus has approximately a dozen riders by the time it leaves the Prefontaine St. stop; and the northbound route 49 that arrives at 5th Ave/S. Jackson St around 5:47 AM is at or very close to capacity. Many of the passengers on these routes are construction workers. Overcrowding is just going to get worse once the Amazon workers start going back to work because many of them board buses at 3rd Ave. stops past Prefontaine St. .
You can’t maintain the 12 or 18 person capacity limits just by putting signs on the bus seats and on the outside message boards. You need to actually have people on the bus to count passengers and have security staff at the heavily used stops to check IDs. I’ve NEVER seen anyone monitoring capacity on the buses, even on the heavily used routes such as the 36 and 60. I catch the southbound 107 bus from the Beacon Ave./Lander St. stop at 3:23 PM. The route 36 and route 60 buses that stop there are usually at or very close to full capacity, so those signs aren’t going to help unless you add more service and start monitoring how many people are on the buses.