Proposed Kitsap Transit Outlying service
Kitsap Transit is owned by the citizens of Kitsap County. Its operations are funded primarily with local sales tax revenue and passenger fares. per Kitsap Transit Funding To be very specific on these funds, Kitsap County has a 0.027 sales tax rate (2.7 cents per dollar) that are used to fund local services not covered by property tax levies or funds coming in from other sources (many capital projects are funded through state or federal grants). A dedicated portion of these taxes are directly put into transit - 0.3 cents for ferries and 0.8 cents for busses (a transit sales tax rate of 0.011).per Kitsap County
While Kitsap Transit charges fares for service, the bulk of the operating revenue is from the sales tax. This makes sense and is not nefarious. Transit is a public good that benefits everyone, or at least should. However, access or availability is not evenly distributed across the county - the ferries only operate from Kingston, Bremerton, Bainbridge Island, Port Orchard, and Southworth and the buses only operate inside of the incorporated cities and UGAs. Of incorporated cities in Kitsap County, only Poulsbo does not have ferry service.
This presents a picture where more than half of the county is paying for transit service that does benefit them (all of us are better of when some people are not driving), but that they cannot reasonably use. People in Seabeck, Holly, Hansville, near Belfair, Gorst, Bangor, even West Silverdale have no direct access to transit. Once they have driven to the urbanized areas, there is little value in abandoning their vehicles for buses.
I understand the approach, and I agree that the bulk of transit service should be in urbanized areas and should cover where the majority of the population lives. However, I think we are missing the opportunity to reach out and serve the more rural parts of the county. Many Kitsap County older adults choose to age in place - in places like Hite Center, Brownsville, Seabeck, etc - and many of these people should not be driving.
Extend the thinking out to all of the teenagers, disabled, otherwise lovely members of our community who cannot drive, and we start to realize that there are quite a number of folks who would benefit from a little bit of imagination.
We simply cannot afford (as a county) to have fixed routes hourly going all over the county every day. The operating expenses would balloon.
I think there is a shockingly simple solution. A weekly rotating at least twice daily route - an out and back - although I think that it would easily be at least four times daily because our county is not that big. Actual locations to be determined by KT; maybe something like:
- Mon: Seabeck and Holly
- Tue: Brownsville and Keyport
- Wed: Bangor and Vinland
- Thu: Gorst & Belfair(I know Belfair is Mason)
- Fri: Hansville and Port Gamble
Such a service would be essentially 1 route - let’s call it the 400 - with associated driver and bus/van asset needed (and whatever backups) but would bring riders in, especially seniors who should not be driving but do not qualify for ACCESS.
My idea is that the connection is to whatever is nearest, so Brownsville and Keyport might go to Wheaton Way Transit Center; Gorst & Belfair could go to West Bremerton or Port Orchard; Bangor and Vinland to North Viking, etc.
My focus here is bringing outlying folks into town, but the routes do go by recreation opportunities and might serve to bring city folks out to places like: Green Mountain - Wildcat TH, or Port Gamble Heritage, etc.
This is a public health benefit + increases the value of transit to the county. I will continue to advocate for this and flush this out - first proposed to Kitsap Transit (in a very limited fashion) in 2021.
future work on this on my part will include maps