In this week's paper I write about the King County Regional Transit Task Force saying its finally time to end rules that favor the suburbs and punish the city—because it's too expensive and it's not working:

There are two problems afoot:

The first is something called the 40/40/20 rule, established in King County Metro's six-year plan (from 2002 to 2007), which the task force wants to do away with. It dictates that new service must be divided: 40 percent to east King County suburbs, 40 percent to south King County suburbs, and the remaining 20 percent to Seattle and a few northern suburbs like Shoreline. Also hard on the city, another policy (called 60/20/20) says that Seattle must take 62 percent of reductions, while other reductions are split between the eastern and southern suburbs. "It was essentially a political construct before the suburbs would support any new revenue for Metro," Phillips says. "They felt they have been on the short end of that."

But in practice, 40/40/20 resulted in "routes with only three or six people on the bus, and it's not making sense because buses cost a lot to run and you want them as full as you can [get them]," says Gerken.

Read the whole transit-lovin' THING.