Community Transit to reduce services due to labor and ridership shortage caused by pandemic

Customers using public transportation in the North Sound will soon have to wait for their ride a bit longer– Community Transit announced a reduction to services, impacting trips across Snohomish County.

Community Transit is currently seeing 55% of its pre-pandemic ridership levels. The company is reducing all of its weekday bus services by 8% starting March 20. Officials explained the service changes are due to the pandemic causing a labor shortage and ridership shortage in public transportation across the region.

"We’re trying to minimize the impact on riders. So, we’re looking at routes that have a lot of frequent service—like our Swift service has a bus that comes by every 10 minutes. We’re moving that to every 12 minutes. We don’t know that’s going to have a big impact on customers," said Martin Munguia, communications manager for Community Transit.

The company’s update about the service changes further stated, "The Swift Green Line between Seaway Transit Center in Everett and Canyon Park in Bothell will be reduced from a bus every 10 minutes to a bus every 12 minutes. This change eliminates 28 trips a day with a small impact to riders."

Current bus drivers said they took on heavy lift during the pandemic to keep transit moving.

"I do feel the impact. Long, long hours. It’s hard work, but we want to help everybody out so everybody can get there," said Fred Gorham, who has been a bus driver for 34 years.

Community Transit stated, "Service to and from the newly opened Northgate Station will see the greatest changes as ridership to the northernmost light rail station remains low. This will also affect Sound Transit’s Routes 511 and 512, which Community Transit operates."

Ekaterina Teterina rides the bus to get to class at the University of Washington. She recently had to navigate a new plan to get to school because a shortage of bus drivers forced the regularly scheduled trip to close.

"The buses no longer went straight to UW. Before, there was a bus that stopped really close to where my classes were. So, it was very convenient and it was a straight shot from here to UW. But now they don’t do that anymore so it has to go to Northgate. And then from Northgate, I take the lightrail to school," said Teterina. 

With several scheduled trips to Northgate Station soon to be cut, Teterina will have to navigate yet another plan to get to UW.

"It’s nerve-racking. I’m really nervous about that, especially because student parking is not free and it’s very expensive to Seattle. I prefer to not have to drive," said Teterina.

Munguia said the changes give customers the reliability and predictability they need to get where they’re going, unlike what’s happening now with trips going out of service during the day on short notice.

"We were having to cancel trips during the day and often times we didn’t have a lot of notice before the trips were going to start that we canceled them. So, that’s definitely not good for riders," said Munguia. "People are going out to the bus stop and unless they have a smart phone or something and they’re connected to us to get an alert, they may not know that the bus they’re waiting for simply isn’t running."

Community Transit is ramping up recruiting efforts to hire more staff. This includes using a new software to host virtual job fairs throughout Snohomish County and beyond.

"The software we’re getting is going to be a lot more robust so that we can have breakout rooms where people can meet with different employees, talk about different issues and really recreate that in-person job fair that you would have, but make it more widely available by doing it online," said Munguia.

The company is also offering bonuses through its referral program for current staff to help recruiting efforts.

Community Transit’s announcement is available in its entirety online. Information about updated trips, services and hiring opportunities are also available on the website.

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