Massive Number of Bus Riders Turn out to Talk to Democrats on the King County Council

Last night's County Council hearing on the future of King County Metro was an event of epic proportions.

This photo taken by our friend Jenn Olegario tells the story of how many people wanted to testify.  The line was over two hours to get into the ill-equipped County Council chambers and the testimony supporting the congestion reduction charge lasted until 10:30pm.

 

The main story lines from last night:

1. This is one of the largest turnouts ever for a public hearing in King County with 500-1000 people showing up and trying to testify and many of them were not able to wait out the lines to get in, although many patient transit supporters did.
2. People were appalled by the potential loss of bus service and 99% of them supported the fee. The biggest message other than supporting the fee was that Metro should eventually levy more sustainable and non regressive forms of taxation to remain solvent.
3. Councilmembers Dunn, Patterson, Hague, and von Reichbauer were notably absent from the hearing.  A lot of their constituents who were there to testify to them were very disappointed that their councilmembers were not there. None of the absent members have stated their support of approve the congestion reduction charge councilmanically.  Hague, Dunn, and von Reichbauer have all stated their opposition to the short term fee without a public vote.

Here has been a lot of coverage on this event from king 5, Seattle PI, Seattle Times, and publicola.

I testified to the partial council and delivered the nearly 2,000 emails that all of you sent in to support the measure.  Thank you for your support and please visit www.stopbuscuts.com to keep the pressure up!

A lot of people were livetweeting the event, to see a good rundown check out:
@ericacbarnett
@transpochoices
and @seattletransitblog
The main hastag of the day being used was #savekcmetro
Also check out Oran's flick of the evening http://tinyurl.com/5vvj4ye