T4.1 Increase transit *
Increase local public transit routes/frequency with a focus on expanding transit service before and after traditional business hours and on weekends.
In 2018, 66% of the voters approved a four-tenths of 1 percent (0.4%) increase in the sales tax to improve and expand Intercity Transit’s services. (This works out to roughly another $2 to $5 a month for each household.) Some of the money is going to increasing the frequency and operating hours of local and commuter bus services, expanding specialized transportation services for seniors and those living with disabilities, and adding a new route into northeast Lacey. More details are available in the agency’s Short- and Long-Range Plan.
For the foreseeable future transit in the County means buses, and we can roughly estimate the carbon footprint of riding one. Of course, if the bus is going to be running anyway, I can ride it instead of driving without adding anything to my carbon footprint, so whatever we can do to encourage more people to ride on existing routes is desirable.
However, deciding whether to add new routes involves more complicated trade offs. In 2017 Intercity Transit’s buses got 5.2 mpg on diesel. Burning a gallon of diesel produces well to wheels emissions of roughly 28 pounds of CO2, so the tailpipe emissions are roughly 5.4 lbs/mile. (IT uses 5% biodiesel in the mix, so that probably reduces these emissions a little, and they are evaluating switching to zero-emissions renewable diesel.) Let’s suppose an average passenger car with a few years on it gets 22 mpg; burning a gallon of gasoline produces well to wheels emissions of roughly 24 lbs of CO2 (or 21.6 lbs if it has 10% ethanol and we don’t count the ethanol’s carbon content at all, which is unfortunately the international convention for this calculation). Then our emissions are 1.1 lbs/mile, so our bus emissions are less than our emissions driving alone as long as we have more than five passengers in the bus.
In 2018 the average cost per trip for each person riding the bus was $6.97. According to the AAA, the current total cost of owning and driving an average small sedan 10,000 miles a year is 61 cents/mile, so the operating cost per person trip of riding the bus starts to be less than the total cost of going alone in a new car once a trip gets longer than 11.4 miles. If I own the car anyway, the cost of additional driving according to the AAA is only 16.9 cents a mile, and the cost per trip on the bus isn’t less than the cost per trip in the car until the trip is over 41 miles. Since half of all trips in the State are less than three miles, there’s a considerable cost to reducing emissions by adding transit routes. Of course, if we move to significantly more efficient light vehicles, this balance will shift further in favor of them unless buses make equal efficiency gains.