Metro shuts down 100 bus lines

King County Metro shut down more than 100 bus lines Thursday night — cutting its service in half and stranding commuters — after deciding some icy roads were just too dangerous for its fleet.

Metro spokeswoman Linda Thielke said the agency's staff had prepared a week for Thursday's storm, but buses were quickly overwhelmed by the slick roadways. Riders waited hours at bus stops and grew frustrated as buses either never arrived or drove past because they were already full.

Joe Miller, 22, said it took him about two hours to get to work on the bus Thursday, a trip that normally takes about 40 minutes from his Georgetown home to his business in West Seattle.

Buses became stuck or were involved in minor accidents, or drivers found their routes — even alternate routes — impossible to navigate.

Even on relatively light-snow routes, such as the 72 to Lake City, veteran driver Kent Madrigal said there were hidden patches of ice. The route detoured from its winding side-street route onto wide Lake City Way, where Madrigal still had to pass some customers to avoid stopping on a hill.

"I like to help people when I can ... but I have to obey the physics on the situation," he said.

On one morning trip, some riders blew off stress by singing "Silent Night" and "Jingle Bells," teaching the words to children aboard, he said.

As snow continued to fall throughout the day and temperatures remained below freezing, Metro officials decided many routes were simply too dangerous and diverted buses to other routes to focus on core service and improve travel times on those routes, Thielke said.

A major task Thursday night was to retrieve about 200 buses that were stranded on various roads from Capitol Hill to smaller outlying towns.

The agency relied on the Internet and news outlets to get the word out about the cancellations.

"Safety is such a huge concern for everybody, whether it's the people making the decisions or the people driving the buses," she said. "We're going to take some flak for canceling some routes, but if we get through this with no injuries, I'd call that a success."

Thursday night passenger David Enroth e-mailed The Times to vent about the Metro cancellations.

"Who in the hell is responsible for this decision? How does METRO expect people like me to get home without freezing to death?" he wrote. "I live in Madison Park and the only bus service is Route #11. I'm at the Seattle Center. How am I supposed to get home?"

When reached by phone an hour later, he was still at Seattle Center, seething and without a way home.

In choosing which routes to close, a big consideration was avoiding what happened in past storms, where passengers had to deboard on a hill — or even a freeway — a mile or so from home. "We really wanted to avoid stranding people on stuck buses," Thielke said.

One challenge today will be to avoid repeating Thursday's problems. Buses to First Hill were diverted to the less steep Jackson Street and Boren Avenue but still got stuck and blocked the buses behind them, he said.

Metro provides 400,000 rides on a typical weekday, and carries more than a third of the downtown Seattle work force.

The canceled routes include not just isolated routes in the foothills but some busy commuter lines, such as Sound Transit's service from South Hill (Puyallup) to Overlake, which carries 1,450 people on a warm day, or Sound Transit's Bellevue-SeaTac-West Seattle line, which normally carries 2,365 people, as well as cross-lake routes from the University District to Kirkland, and from Northgate to Issaquah.

In the meantime, Metro will operate "chained shuttles," using Access minibuses or vans to carry people to some hilly areas. These included Finn Hill, the Issaquah Highlands and Mercer Island. A shuttle also will run from West Seattle's Alaska Junction to nearby Genessee Hill and the Admiral District.

Metro has a fleet of 1,329 buses, of which about 1,200 run on a normal day. But fewer will be available today because some are stuck, some are damaged and some need safety checks, Thielke said.

Most Metro buses had chains only on the rear tires, where the drive train is, leaving the front and center rows of tires unchained. Hybrid buses are heavier than typical diesel buses, but that's actually a disadvantage when trying to maneuver downhill, Thielke said.

"Chains don't do much good for any vehicle on ice, and a lot of these roads have ice under the snow."

Transit conditions are better in Snohomish County, where Community Transit canceled only a handful of trips Thursday and expected to preserve "90 to 95 percent of the service' today, said spokesman Martin Munguia.

Buses ran into morning delays of 10 to 30 minutes on some routes Thursday morning, which could happen again today, he said. Some routes where buses arrive every 20 minutes were changed to 40 minutes between trips.

Shuttle vans will likely be used again on some routes, where a transit supervisor takes people where buses cannot go, he said. For instance, the Canyon Park area of Bothell has been especially tough, Munguia said.

Seattle's South Lake Union streetcar and Sound Transit's downtown Tacoma Link line were operating normally Thursday night.

Sounder commuter trains will be on schedule this morning, said Sound Transit spokeswoman Linda Robson. Trains run from Seattle's King Street Station to and from Everett and Tacoma.

But Sound Transit canceled a 5:55 p.m. departure for Tacoma on Thursday, with only 10 minutes notice. There were no customer-service people or electronic messages at King Street Station to tell people, according to one passenger — Kevin Desmond, the manager of Metro Transit. "They dropped the ball on that one," he said.

It wasn't just buses that struggled Thursday, either. Web sites for Community Transit and Sound Transit failed Thursday under the weight of rider demand. Both reacted by posting a stripped-down home page.

The state Department of Transportation (DOT) had to break up information into simpler Web sites to cope with record use — for instance, traffic-flow maps and cameras no longer appeared together. The DOT got almost 8 million page views Wednesday and was on pace for higher use Thursday.

Metro's Web site worked normally, but the agency warned callers of long waits on the customer hotline, 206-553-3000.

Updates are being issued through the Regional Public Information Network, rpin.org an online message board shared by local governments.

Times staff reporter Lynda V. Mapes contributed to this report.

Mike Lindblom: 206-515-5631 or mlindblom@seattletimes.com