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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 , dial-a-ride, vanpool and ride-matching for . 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 .
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.
The agency's original headquarters and bus base was on Sprague Avenue west of downtown Tacoma, which they inherited from Tacoma Transit and acquired outright from the city government in 1985. Pierce Transit had already approved construction of a new headquarters facility and chose a site on South Tacoma Way in modern-day Lakewood after an earlier option in western Tacoma drew opposition from local residents. Construction of the $14million facility, which included four buildings on with capacity for up to 200 buses, began in 1986 and was completed in late 1987. 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 Sound Transit and operated by Pierce Transit, in 1999.
On June 14, 1993, Pierce Transit opened a major transit center on Commerce Street in Downtown Tacoma that would serve 1,300 buses on a typical weekday. Commerce Street Station includes a garage with layover space for 24 buses, an office, and plaza space; it cost $23.3 million to construct. It was closed for several months during construction of Tacoma Link, a light rail line that would share the street, from 2002 to 2003. Pierce Transit began planning a regional transit center near the Tacoma Dome in the mid-1990s in anticipation of future commuter rail service. The first phase of Tacoma Dome Station opened on October 25, 1997, for use by local and express buses. Sounder commuter rail service to Tacoma began in 2000 and was followed by the opening of Tacoma Link, the state's first modern light rail service, in August 2003.
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 it later being ruled unconstitutional by the Washington Supreme Court. In 2000, 14 percent of service was reduced and a fare increase was set to temporarily make up for revenue from the tax, which made up 38 percent of the agency's operating budget. Voters approved a 0.3 percent sales tax increase to fund transit service during a special election in February 2002, preventing a planned cut in bus service of up to 45 percent, and up to 25 percent for paratransit.
In May 2012, the cities of Bonney Lake, Buckley, DuPont, Orting, and Sumner withdrew from Pierce Transit's PTBA after their local bus routes had been cut. The boundary change shrunk the agency's service area to .
During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Pierce Transit laid off or furloughed 90 employees amid a projected revenue cut of $47 million due to low ridership and sales tax returns.
In August 2023, the board of commissioners voted to defer work on the bus rapid transit project due to its six-year delay and $150 million cost increase. In its place, Pierce Transit plans to improve Route 1 service on Pacific Avenue in 2024 with an "enhanced" express service that serves 14 stops and uses transit signal priority. The service retains the "Stream Community Line" moniker and a 28-year naming rights sponsorship with health system MultiCare valued at $9.3 million. It began service on April 1, 2024. The agency has also studied several four additional routes for future expansion of the Stream bus rapid transit system to serve Lakewood, South Tacoma, and Puyallup.
In 2008, 19 million people utilized its services. 272 wheelchair-accessible circulate between 3,300 bus stops, 626 bus shelters and 28 park-and-ride lots. Additionally, Pierce Transit runs 11 transit centers and stations. Pierce Transit also provides vanpool, ridematching and express transportation between counties. Disabled passengers who are not able to use Pierce Transit's buses have access to a special transportation system called SHUTTLE.
The agency launched an on-demand ride-hail service, named "Runner", in 2020 to serve the Ruston Way corridor. It was expended to Joint Base Lewis–McChord, Spanaway/Parkland, and the Port of Tacoma in 2021.
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Fares last updated on: 3/1/2016
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