The Central Puget Sound is sort of a transit wonderland. We have traditional bus service, a monorail, vehicle and passenger ferries, a couple streetcar lines, Sounder commuter rail, Link light-rail in King County and Tacoma, the nation’s only combined bus and train tunnel, a downtown Seattle ride-free area, and now the latest addition to the mix: Community Transit’s new Swift service.
Boarding Swift at Aurora Village TC - Oran Viriyincy
Swift is Washington’s first implementation of “Bus Rapid Transit” or BRT. Unfortunately, BRT isn’t a very descriptive term. The idea behind BRT is to offer most of the benefits of rail service without the high cost of purchasing trains and installing tracks. It is a sort of enhanced bus service, but no well-defined criteria exist to determine if a given system qualifies as BRT.
BRT can include anything from dedicated roadways, reserved HOV/bus lanes, bus signal priority at intersections, expedited fare-payment and boarding systems, greater stop-spacing than standard bus service, unique branding and improved passenger information.
In Swift’s case BRT includes almost all of the above except for dedicated roadways. While Aurora has bus lanes in many places, Swift merges with traffic in some locations and buses have to wait behind cars in turn lanes at some intersections. Swift has only 14 stations spaced at one to two mile intervals at major transfer points along its 17 mile route. As opposed to simple bus stops, each Swift station is distinguished from regular local bus service with bright blue, green, and white signage and the distinctive Swift logo. Stations have a passenger shelter, seating, a ticket vending machine, and an ORCA reader.
One difference between Swift and traditional bus service is that all passenger fares are collected prior to boarding the bus. Cash customers purchase tickets for $1.50 using ticket vending machines and ORCA passengers tap their cards on readers located at every station. This allows passengers to board and exit quickly since there is no need to wait for fares to be collected.
So what is riding Swift like? After boarding, Swift is remarkably like riding any other bus. After waiting for two or three minutes at a southbound Swift station in Lynnwood, I boarded the bus and realized that while Swift buses are clean and bright, the ride itself is nothing special.
Swift’s key difference isn’t because of new buses or unique branding; the difference is that Swift actually moves more quickly. Limited stops and off-board fare-payment mean buses stop less often and for shorter intervals. Access to priority lanes mean buses can pass traffic during congested periods – and the bus I rode did pass traffic along congested areas of Aurora Avenue.
These are the types of changes I would love to see on Metro – and Metro plans to launch their own version of BRT in 2010 under the “RapidRide” brand. Unfortunately, RapidRide will lack a key difference of Swift.
Instead of all fares being accepted before boarding, RapidRide will have four possible boarding and fare-payment scenarios depending on if the stop being boarded is equipped with an ORCA reader and if the customer is paying with cash, a transfer, or ORCA. Since RapidRide will not use ticket vending machines, cash customers will purchase fares from the driver.
As anyone who has ever ridden the 358 “express” bus between downtown Seattle and Aurora Village can attest, a limited-stop route along the southern part of the Aurora corridor would be most welcome – but since RapidRide won’t have off-board payment at every station, the time savings will be significantly reduced and the lack of a standard system will be confusing.
Metro should consider the benefits of ticket vending machines and the confusion resulting from four possible boarding scenarios. Short of installing ticket vending machines, Metro planners should consider partnering with Community Transit to extend Swift service to Seattle (replacing RapidRide’s future E line) and througuout the region, instead of creating a watered-down version of BRT that causes RapidRide boarding to be less swift than its neighbor system to the north.
