Tacoma City Council Study Session - Pierce Transit Long Range Plan Update - July 22, 2025
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Tacoma City Council Study Session - Pierce Transit Long Range Plan Update - July 22, 2025
On July 22, 2025, the Tacoma City Council held a study session to receive an update on the second draft of Pierce Transit's Long Range Plan. Brittany Carbullido and Andrew Arnes from Pierce Transit presented the plan, which outlines service scenarios based on current and potential future sales tax revenue. Council members asked questions about funding, service coverage, coordination with jurisdictions, and the potential for a future ballot measure.
Presentation Overview
- Pierce Transit conducted extensive outreach, including 27 group events, coordination with jurisdictions, and a survey that received 700 responses. Key community priorities included more frequent service, new routes, extended hours, and better connections.
- The second draft prioritizes service hours over large capital projects like Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) to address public demand for more frequent and reliable service.
- Current service hours are about 470,000, with only 10,000 hours available under the current 0.6% sales tax rate. The plan presents three scenarios:
- Baseline (0.6% sales tax): Modest improvements, including increased frequency on Routes 1 and 3, and adjustments to connect with future Link light rail stations.
- Scenario A (0.9% sales tax, requires voter approval): Up to 600,000 service hours (24% increase), with many routes operating at 30-minute frequency or better, extended evening hours, and efficiency adjustments.
- Scenario B (1.1% sales tax, requires RCW change and voter approval): Further increases to high-capacity service on key routes, four new conceptual routes in Puyallup, Port of Tacoma, East/Central Tacoma, and North Tacoma.
- The board is not selecting a scenario at adoption on August 11, 2025; the plan will include all scenarios to inform future ballot measure discussions, which may begin in early 2025.
Discussion Items
- Councilmember Bushnell asked about ballot measure implementation and whether different jurisdictions could opt for different tax levels. Pierce Transit responded that a sales tax increase must be uniform across the service area, but other funding agreements might be possible. She also inquired about future BRT potential, noting studies on Routes 1, 2, 3, and 402, but acknowledged SR7 improvements are complex and require partnerships with WSDOT and Pierce County.
- Councilmember Rumba raised concerns about Northeast Tacoma, which lacks service and voted against a previous measure. She stressed the need for a connection to King County/Federal Way light rail to gain support from the 18,000 residents in that area.
- Councilmember Sidalgay questioned how Pierce Transit plans for potential new riders who are not current users. Presenters noted they are exploring demand technology and use a transit propensity index, but acknowledged the long-range plan does not heavily adjust existing routes. He emphasized the need to better communicate benefits to voters to secure a tax increase.
- Councilmember Scott observed that a 50% sales tax increase (to 0.9%) yields only a 24% service hour increase. Pierce Transit explained that a portion of new revenue must address a projected deficit due to rising costs outpacing sales tax revenue.
- Councilmember Hines asked about coordination with public works agencies on infrastructure improvements. Presenters confirmed close coordination with jurisdiction planning departments, noting Tacoma's transportation plan includes bus lane priorities, and that partnerships are key to implementing improvements.
- Mayor Woodards asked about the timeline for board decisions on a ballot measure. Councilmember Hines noted the board will discuss timing and will engage with all affected jurisdictions.
Key Outcomes
- No formal council action was taken; the meeting was informational.
- Pierce Transit's board is scheduled to adopt the long range plan on August 11, 2025, without selecting a specific scenario.
- Board discussions on a potential ballot measure for a sales tax increase (from 0.6% to 0.9% or higher) may begin in early 2025, pending further outreach and coordination.
- The council and Pierce Transit committed to continued collaboration on funding, service design, and infrastructure partnerships.
Meeting Transcript
I'd like to call to order the study session of July 22nd, 2025. Clerk, please call the roll. Councilmember Bushnell. Present. Deputy Mayor Daniels. Councilmember Diaz. Here. Councilmember Hines. Absent. Councilmember Ramba. Here. Councilmember Sidalgay. Here. Councilmember Scott. Here. Councilmember Walker, absent. Mayor Woodards. Here. The study session material sent to you at 11. Wonderful. All right. Our first agenda item today is the Pierce Transit long range planning update. And I'm going to call on Pierce Transit Planning Manager. Andrew Arn is it Arnaz? Arnest. Arness Arnest to begin the presentation. Turn it over to you. Thank you for having us. I'm actually going to turn it over to Brittany Carver. Oh, we'll be our plan on our team. She's going to be leading that. All right, Brittany. Let's do it. Let's do it. And I know that Councilmember Walker is so sad that she couldn't be here today. I know. We missed her at our last board meeting too, but hopefully we'll catch her in August. Okay, sounds better. Okay, so I am here to provide you all with an update on the second draft of our long range plan. Um it we've been working pretty hard at this second draft for the last three months. Um, just really working through the financial aspect of it and making sure that what we're putting forward in this new draft is sound and based in forecasting and reflects what we can realistically deliver. Before I get into the details about what's in this second draft, just wanted to give everyone uh overview of the different community outreach events that we've done related to this plan as well as the feedback that we've received. So we've had multiple town halls, uh also coordinated quite extensively with our jurisdiction partners and planning commissions, held 27 group events, also coordinated with our jurisdictions on the comprehensive plan updates as well to make sure that we are in sync as much as possible. To gather broader input from the community, we also put a survey out and we received 700 responses to that. The survey was really asking folks what they wanted us to prioritize when it came to transit service in the long range plan. So that survey was open in July of last year, but we have continued to do outreach from last year all the way through to this summer. And these are some of the themes that we saw through that outreach and the survey as well. So really what we saw is that folks want more frequent bus service, new routes, extended hours, better connections between our routes, as well as a few comments about bus rapid transit. I won't read through all of these quotes from that survey, but I did want to touch on the last one because I think it is really indicative of the challenge and what people want to see. So the last quote on here says more frequent service would encourage people to try transit and become regular transit users.
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