Description
Making car-free access to transit easier helps facilitate greater ridership and can lower local air pollution. This can be achieved through safety upgrades to bike lanes and sidewalks, strategic parking fees, reexamining how Park and Rides are used, and deemphasizing single-occupant vehicles. King County will partner with jurisdictions, community, and private sector partners to deliver these measures with an emphasis on improving access for frontline communities.
- Enhance zero-emission micromobility connections to transit. Micromobility devices are small, low-speed, human- or electric-powered transportation devices, including bicycles, scooters, electric-assist bicycles, electric scooters, and other small, lightweight, wheeled conveyances. Micromobility devices offer new and powerful ways to help people meet their transportation needs and can expand the reach of transit. King County will work with the King County–Cities Climate Collaboration (K4C) to pilot a regional approach to providing zero-emission micromobility (i.e., bike and scooter share) connections to transit. As micromobility services expand across King County, it is important to ensure that micromobility is integrated with transit as a seamless transfer experience and leverage micromobility as an important zero-emission access mode. King County will partner with Sound Transit and King County cities with micromobility services to incentivize and centralize parking for zero-emission micromobility devices at transit centers, stops and stations.
- Make walking, rolling and biking to transit safe, convenient, and accessible. King County transit riders need safe, comfortable, and convenient connections to transit, including sidewalks, street crossings, and protected bike lanes. Metro’s 2025 Safe Routes to Transit Implementation Guide will identify improvement opportunities to make walking, rolling, and biking to transit safe, convenient and accessible for all, especially priority populations. King County will partner with cities and other regional partners to develop, prioritize, and help identify and/or secure funding for street and safety improvements that local jurisdictions will deliver on their streets that connect to Metro stops and stations.
- Re-envision park and ride properties. Metro’s 2024 Park and Ride System Evaluation Study evaluates and recommends actions to re-purpose or improve King County-owned park and rides to better support customer mobility needs, transit operations, and climate action goals. Metro’s Park and Ride System Evaluation will create a plan to right-size Metro’s transit customer parking and implement alternative transit-supportive uses on park and ride properties, such as mobility hubs, TOD, and terminal facilities. Metro’s paid parking program aligns with the ORCA Lift program to prioritize access for people with low-incomes and prioritizing permits for transit customers with low-incomes that need parking to access transit.
- Bring more mobility choices through mobility hubs. Mobility Hubs create better access to more ways to get around, especially for those with the fewest choices. King County’s Mobility Hubs program works in partnership with local partners to supplement existing transit stops and stations with more multimodal options and travel amenities and bring more mobility choices to existing community destinations. Mobility hubs reduce the need to own or use a car for daily trips and make walking, biking, taking transit, and other zero-emission modes viable options for daily travel. Metro’s Mobility Hub Implementation Guide identified hub types and potential locations through partnership with the Mobility Hub Board, community members that represent underserved populations across King County. King County will continue to work with local communities to design and implement mobility hubs. Metro will convene King County partners, like parks, libraries, and community and human services and community-based organizations to bring more mobility choices to community destinations. Metro will also convene internal partners to ensure that bus stop and station improvements integrate multimodal choices and supportive elements.
- Invest in multimodal improvements in urban centers. King County’s transit-oriented urban centers are 15-minute neighborhoods where residents and employees can meet their daily needs without a car. In transit-oriented urban centers, Metro invests in access to transit through multimodal improvements and programs rather than single-occupancy vehicle parking for transit riders. Multimodal access improvements can be street improvements that make it easier for riders to walk, roll, and bike to transit or programs the incentivize or remove barriers to accessing transit. Metro will partner with local jurisdictions to identify, design, and help identify and/ or secure funding for multimodal access improvements for local jurisdictions to deliver in transit station areas and transit-oriented urban centers.
- Implement a regional paid parking program at transit parking facilities. Parking at transit facilities is intended to provide access to those who need it most, and who intend to board transit. However, some facilities are used as free all-day car storage for people not using transit or are used by drivers who live very close by and could employ other first-mile-last-mile strategies (other than Single Occupancy Vehicle use) to reach their bus or train. King County will coordinate with Sound Transit and WSDOT to implement a regional paid parking program at transit parking facilities that regularly exceed 70 percent utilization to support access to transit, grow ridership, and incentivize multimodal access to transit. Actively managing public parking at high-demand transit stations will disincentivize driving to transit stations, ensure that people that need to drive to transit have access, and encourage more people to take transit or other access modes to reach transit facilities.