Pierce Transit
Pierce Transit, officially the Pierce County Public Transportation Benefit Area Corporation, is an operator of public transit in Pierce County, Washington. It operates a variety of services, including fixed-route buses, dial-a-ride transportation, vanpool and ride-matching for carpools. The agency's service area covers the urbanized portions of Pierce County, part of the Seattle metropolitan area, and includes the city of Tacoma. In , the system had a ridership of , or about per weekday as of . History Public transportation in Pierce County historically focused on the city of Tacoma, which laid its first streetcar lines in 1888. The streetcars were phased out in the 1930s and replaced with citywide bus service, with the last line closing in 1938. The operators of the streetcar and bus systems, Tacoma Transit Company, was acquired by the city government in 1961 for $750,000. Under city ownership, the system was funded by a $0.75 monthly household tax first levied in 1965. A public transportation benefit area (PTBA) was created in 1979 with the goal of establishing a countywide bus system. On November 6, 1979, voters in Tacoma approved a 0.3 percent sales tax to fund a new transit system, initially named the Pierce County Public Transit Benefit Area Authority, that would eventually expand to cover the county. The Pierce County PBTA took over Tacoma Transit's routes on January 1, 1980, and over the following year annexed other systems throughout the county. The takeover of Tacoma Transit was done on a temporary agreement while a final cost for the system was under negotiation. The agency adopted its new name, "Pierce Transit", in June 1980; the name "Tahoma Transit" was favored by staff, while board members proposed "The Bus" and "GO". Pierce Transit began expanding outside of Tacoma on July 1, 1980, with new routes to Federal Way, Fife, Milton, Puyallup, Sumner, Fort Lewis, and McChord Air Force Base. The Federal Way route was created through an agreement with Metro Transit, King County's system, to provide a seamless transfer to an existing express route to Downtown Seattle. These new routes competed with an existing private operator, who filed a lawsuit to halt Pierce Transit's expansion after negotiations broke down. Under threat of a potential injunction from the Pierce County Superior Court, a tentative agreement was reached between Pierce Transit and the operator, who would operate new routes under a contract with the agency. Pierce Transit began operating direct express bus service from Lakewood and Tacoma to Downtown Seattle on September 17, 1990. The routes were later converted into Sound Transit Express routes, funded by the regional transit authority and operated by Pierce Transit, in 1999. The agency opened its central bus hub at Tacoma Dome Station in 1997, where Sounder commuter rail and Tacoma Link light rail service began operating in 2000 and 2003, respectively. The passage of Initiative 695 in 1999 eliminated the use of motor vehicle excise tax, a funding source for local transit throughout the state, leading to service cuts at Pierce Transit despite