Metro Transit says federal cash will fuel growth

King County Metro Transit is a big winner in the hunt for federal stimulus money, so much that the agency — despite its budget crisis — gets to keep growing in 2009.

Over the next two years, Metro will receive $25 million for maintenance and $46 million to replace aging diesel buses with hybrids.

"It helps us from reducing service this year and prevents us from reducing jobs here at Metro," general manager Kevin Desmond said Wednesday, at a briefing to elected officials in the county's regional transit committee.

A steep plunge in consumer spending — sales taxes subsidize 71 percent of Metro's operating budget — is creating a $326 million gap between Metro's income and its plans for huge service expansions for 2008-11.

To stay afloat, Metro boosted fares by a quarter per trip last month and will raise them another quarter next year. The agency canceled some maintenance and capital projects last fall, but none that riders on the street would notice.

Those moves and the stimulus trimmed this year's shortfall to a manageable $17 million, likely to be covered by cash reserves. The overall budget is around $600 million this year.

"In the long term that does not solve our problem, but in the near term it helps," Desmond said.

In fact, the agency is going ahead with service increases in Seattle and Kent this fall, partly funded by those cities, and will stretch a Kent-Covington route east to Maple Valley.

Metro isn't looking at less service, but whether to curtail its growth strategy, fueled by a sales-tax boost that voters passed in 2006. New bus-rapid-transit lines are promised in the early 2010s for the Ballard, Aurora, West Seattle, Sea-Tac/Federal Way, and Bellevue/Overlake corridors.

Metro carries almost 400,000 riders per weekday. Last year, ridership grew 7 percent, the fastest among America's top 10 bus-transit agencies, but Desmond expects a drop this year. Still, he insists there is demand for more service now, rather than waiting for the next boom.

Officials are thinking about hard choices for next year.

Does Metro keep trying to reach new riders, or retrench to its busiest core routes? Should fees be charged to use a park-and-ride lot? Can van pools replace some buses on long commute trips?

Meanwhile, officials are asking the Legislature to allow a public property-tax vote for bus transit, said Metropolitan King County Council member Larry Phillips, D-Seattle.

And a performance audit is under way to see if the agency, whose costs are above the national average, can become more efficient.

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