In November of 1999, Initiative 695 was passed by the voters of WA.  The purpose of I-695 was to eliminate the Motor Vehicle Excise Tax, and to replace the sliding scale for license tab fees (which tied the amount paid to the value of the vehicle) with a flat fee of $30.  Before 695, license tab fees had ranged from about $10 to about $200.  You do the math.  People in the top bracket saved big bucks.  People in the bottom bracket got screwed.  30 bucks may not sound like much, but I know at least a couple of people who had to get rid of their cars because they could no longer afford to keep them legal.  The irony of this is that the MVET had been the primary source of funding for public transit in WA.  For IT, the passage of 695 meant the immediate loss of 42% of their total budget.  Other transit systems were hit even harder.  Some of the smaller systems in rural areas were forced to shut down completely.

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 The No on 695 campaign was one of the broadest, most inclusive coalitions I’ve ever seen, in Oly or elsewhere.  It brought together activists from environmental, labor, disability, civil and human rights and economic justice groups.  After the election, many of us involved in the campaign, now working as the Alliance for Public Transit, turned our efforts to supporting IT and the transit-using public.  One of APT’s main goals was to find ways to restore as much funding as possible for IT.  However, some of us felt that while the budget cuts were important, the resulting service cuts were an even greater, more immediate concern, which was receiving very little attention.  Before the election, once they had estimated how much money would be lost, IT announced their projected service cuts.  Almost every route would be affected to some degree.  Some routes would have fewer runs each day, some would be limited to certain days of the week, some would be cut entirely.  The biggest single cut, affecting the greatest number of people, was the elimination of all Sunday bus service.

When we heard how people were going to be stuck, some of us got together and organised the Oly Free Bus.  We used our own vehicles on our own time paying for gas with our own money, and we tried to fill the gaps in transit service as best we could.  At the time, I had a van equipped with a wheelchair lift, and I'm proud to say that for 13 weeks in the spring of 2000, my van was the only wheelchair accessible public transportation in Thurston County on Sundays.  At first we tried running scheduled routes, to make our service as much as possible like what people had come to expect from IT.  After a few weeks, we got enough publicity and enough public support that we were able to switch to more of an on-call service.  A local business owner paid for us to have cell phones, and helped to pay for gas.

To this day, I have no idea how many people we transported, how many miles we drove, or how much gas we burned.  I do know that every Sunday for 13 weeks, we had at least 2, usually 4, sometimes 6 or more vehicles on the road for at least 6 hours.  I know that I drove other days as well.  I probably spent at least an hour operating as the Oly Free Bus every day that I was in town.  I think some of our other drivers may have run on other days too.  I know that our passengers told us what we had done for them.  Some folks were afraid they would have to move when IT cut their bus routes.  We made it possible for them to stay.  Some of our passengers told us they would have lost their jobs if we hadn't taken them to work.  Some of our most regular riders would have gone hungry if we hadn't taken them to the free dinner at the Baptist church downtown.  One Sunday, our day started early with a call from a man whose wife was having a miscarriage.  They couldn't afford a taxi, and because they didn't have insurance, they were afraid to call an ambulance.  I'll never know for sure if we saved her life, but we were their only ride to the hospital.

After the Free Bus had been running for a couple of months, we got a letter from Tom Bjorgen, IT's attorney, informing us that we were in violation of RCW 36.57a, and ordering us to cease operation immediately.  This law pertains to Public Transportation Benefit Areas.  According to this law, only the designated agency may provide public transportation services within a PTBA.  No other company, organisation, or group may provide public transportation in a PTBA without entering into some sort of agreement with the designated agency for that PTBA.  In short, IT has a state-sanctioned monopoly on public transit in Thurston County.  I had studied RCW 36.57a when we first started thinking about the Free Bus.  I went to IT, and told them what I had in mind, to see if we could come to an agreement so that the Free Bus could operate legally.  They said no.  They didn't want us to do it.  We felt it was too important, so we did it anyway.  And when the letter came, we made enough copies to carry in all of our vehicles.  We told everyone we picked up, "IT says we're breaking the law.  We just wanted you to know that, so you can make an informed choice about riding with us."  No one ever turned us down.

Stay tuned for Part 2