• Transportation
• Metro Transit
• Transit Now
• Service Partnerships
  • »Direct Financial
  • »Speed & Reliability
  • Phasing of Service
  • Q&A
  • Resources
  • To apply
  • Contact us
  • Updates

• You are in:
• »Transportation
• »Transit Now
• »Service Partnerships
• »Speed & reliability

Speed and reliability service partnerships

Speed and reliability partnerships are arrangements between King County and any of 20 cities that contain eligible core service connections in Metro’s system, including RapidRide corridors. The cities agree to make changes to traffic operations and facilities that will improve bus travel time by 10 percent on these core routes. In return, Metro will add 5,000 transit service hours (defined at bottom of page) per year for each core route along the improved corridor(s) that achieves the travel time savings. Metro reserves the service hours at the time of agreement, and service is added after the traffic improvements are complete.

Metro will help cities identify the types of improvements that are likely to achieve sufficient travel-time savings and the models that will be used to measure the savings.

Who can apply for a speed and reliability partnership

Only jurisdictions in King County that contain one of Metro’s eligible core service connections as designated in the Transit Now ordinance are eligible for speed and reliability partnerships. Those 20 cities are: Auburn, Bellevue, Bothell, Burien, Des Moines, Federal Way, Issaquah, Kenmore, Kent, Kirkland, Lake Forest Park, Newcastle, Redmond, Renton, Sammamish, SeaTac, Seattle, Shoreline, Tukwila, and Woodinville.

Eligible core service connections

Most of these cities (listed above) share core service connections with one or more other jurisdictions. The 10 percent transit speed improvement must be measurable along the entire corridor. Therefore, cities considering speed and reliability partnerships are highly encouraged to include in their partnership proposals all of the other jurisdictions that share the core service connection.

See eligible core service connections

Requirements for a speed and reliability partnership

• The partners agree to implement capital improvements or traffic operations changes along a RapidRide or other eligible core service connection corridor.
• The proposed capital improvements or traffic operations changes are projected by Metro to result in transit speed improvements of 10 percent or more on each affected core route, in both directions, for 12 core hours of weekday operation: the three-hour morning peak, the three-hour afternoon/evening peak, and the six hours between these peaks.
• The service added following the successful traffic operations improvements must be public transportation operated by Metro and available to the general public.
• The service added following the successful traffic operations improvements must operate primarily on local streets and arterials, not primarily on state or interstate highways where traffic operations are not managed by the local jurisdiction.
• The proposed new partnership hours must fit within the calendar-year limit of half of total new service hours funded by Transit Now (Metro will determine this and let you know).

How to improve transit speeds

After an applicant identifies a core connection for a possible speed and reliability partnership, Metro staff members can help the applicant identify potential improvements and the time savings these improvements are likely to provide. Each applicant will need to commit resources to observe actual transit operation along the corridor in question in order to finalize specific proposals for improvements. Cities may wish to obtain the services of a consultant to conduct a transit speed and reliability study along their core connection(s).

Metro staff members are available to help cities develop their proposals. Cities are encouraged to consider a range of transit priority treatments. If local traffic engineers lack experience with transit signal priority operational parameters, Metro can assist them in assessing the capabilities of their current signal systems and identifying the inputs that need to be included with each proposal. Metro staff members will be able to describe the transit signal priority functions available for those signal systems where transit signal priority is currently operational and to provide guidance on the level of improvement that is likely to be attained under different control strategies.

How King County will determine if proposed changes will be sufficient

Metro’s primary evaluation tool will be Synchro. When cities submit their proposals for evaluation, they must supply models for weekday morning peak-hour, midday, and afternoon/evening peak-hour conditions for the applicable network and/or street segments. These models must be based on traffic counts taken within the past three years and signal timing plans that have been optimized within the past three years.

Using current data as of March 2007, Metro staff can supply transit travel times and transit travel time variability along the length of each core connection by time of day and direction of travel. This will be the starting basis for computing the 10-percent travel time savings that must be achieved in both the peak and midday periods over the 12 hours from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. in both directions. The maps of eligible core connections identify the cities served by each connection and the routes that will be measured for travel time improvement. Five of these core connections also are candidates for RapidRide bus rapid transit investment under Transit Now.

Priority criteria for proposals

It is important to note that Transit Now gives priority to direct financial partnerships over speed and reliability partnerships. On May 7, 2007, the Metropolitan King County Council approved an ordinance that sets additional priorities for selecting from eligible speed and reliability proposals. The following four priorities are listed in the Transit Now Service Partnership Criteria Ordinance (View the complete ordinance):

1. The partner’s capital investment or traffic operations change will create a transit speed and reliability benefit along a continuous RapidRide bus rapid transit corridor;
2. The partner will commit to additional traffic operations management actions that achieve transit priority in excess of the required projected 10 percent travel time savings;
3. The improvements can be completed within five years; and
4. The partner will commit to provision of complementary actions that improve transit operations or ridership, such as:
   1. implementing innovative transit signal phases and timing;
   2. providing the infrastructure, preferably fiber, required to support communication between transit signal priority equipment in the field and from the field back to the applicable agency and to Metro;
   3. adding curb space for transit terminal or layover;
   4. establishing limits on parking supply or increasing prices for single occupant vehicle parking within the area served by the new service;
   5. implementing parking management to increase the attractiveness of ridesharing;
   6. implementing pass subsidy and promotional programs that achieve higher ridership; or
   7. taking actions that improve the pedestrian environment.

Checklist of requirements and criteria

View a checklist of requirements and criteria (PDF, 32KB)

Agreement

See the Updates page for the revised agreement template that was transmitted with the Service Partnership ordinance on Feb. 21, 2008.
The following link goes to the draft template of a speed and reliability agreement originally used for review: speed_template.pdf (PDF, 66KB).

For more information

For more information about speed and reliability service partnerships, please contact Ellen Bevington, supervisor of Speed and Reliability, at 206-684-1953 or ellen.bevington@metrokc.gov.

How and when to apply

If your organization has an idea for a partnership that you believe meets the requirements, and if your organization will be ready to commit its intent to enter into a future agreement with King County, then:

1. Attend the (optional) pre-proposal meeting on June 21, 2007. The meeting will be held from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. at the King Street Center, 201 S. Jackson Street in Seattle. To help us plan for space and materials, RSVP by June 19 to servicepartnerships@kingcounty.gov. You can use Metro’s online TripPlanner to find out how to get to the meeting by transit. If you are driving, pay parking is available in the basement of the King Street Center and on nearby streets. This meeting has already been held. For more information, see the updates page.
2. Metro requests that you send a letter of interest by July 3, 2007 to allow time for you to work with Metro on your proposal. We encourage you to include letters from other partners who would be part of the agreement (see links to instructions, below). See updates page for information about the letters received. If your organization is interested in a service partnership but has not yet sent a letter of interest, please send it as soon as possible.
3. Work with Metro staff members to refine your idea and determine its feasibility and costs.
4. Submit your proposal to Metro by October 1, 2007 according to the following revised schedule (also see links to instructions, below):
   • October 1, 2007 remains the deadline for final proposals for financial partnerships.
   • October 1, 2007 is now the deadline for preliminary, rather than final, speed and reliability partnership proposals. The required content of the preliminary proposal can be found on the Speed and reliability partnership proposal page.
   • October 31, 2007 is the deadline for Metro to provide technical information and analysis results to applicant cities about State-Route 99 South, Bel-Red, and West Seattle RapidRide corridors.
   • December 21, 2007 is the new deadline for final speed and reliability partnership proposals (details to come).
   For more details about the changes and schedule, please see the Revised schedule and process for speed and reliability partnerships (74KB PDF)
5. If your proposal is recommended, finalize the partnership agreement with Metro for transmittal to the Metropolitan King County Council. Metro will let you know the timing for signing an agreement prior to the start of services.

Application materials for speed and reliability service partnerships

• Letter of interest (requested by July 3, 2007)
• Preliminary partnership proposal (due Oct. 1, 2007)
• Final partnership proposal (details to come) (due Dec. 21, 2007)
• Checklist of requirements and criteria (PDF, 32KB)

---

Last update: February 29, 2008