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14 December 2020 <br />RE: EVERETT TRANSIT PROPOSAL TO TERMINATE ROUTE 70 <br />Dear Everett City Council; <br />Joe A. Kunzler here. Since I need more words than a quick oral public comment, thought I should <br />e-mail comments. It is theatre of the absurd that when I left the Paine Field transit advocacy cause in <br />the spring of 2019 for multiple reasons things have gone from bad to now backward with discussion of <br />an indefinite suspension of Everett Transit Route 70, the route from Seaway Transit Center past Future <br />of Flight to Mukilteo Multimodal Terminal. Granted I have seen the ridership statistics and am well aware <br />of Everett Transit's fiscal crisis. My only issue with the Route 70 suspension is indefinite. <br />As such, for your consideration during your deliberations, I have liberally copy -pasted from a <br />StreetsBlog post by John Stout, the current Transportation Advocate for MASSPIRG, "working to <br />transform the Bay State's transportation network by increasing public transit ridership and improving <br />walking and biking infrastructures so the easiest,' cheapest and most enjoyable ways to get around are <br />also the cleanest and healthiest". So here you go with my emphasis: <br />Looking back over the past seventy years, there are plenty of examples of "temporary" <br />transit cuts that end up turning permanent. For example, in December 2016, the Washington D C <br />Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) one of the largest transit agencies in the country <br />moved to eliminate eight hours of Tate -night Metro service per week to allow more time for <br />maintenance. After four years, this service, used primarily by hospitality and service industry <br />workers traveling considerable distances between their workplace and their homes, has never <br />returned even though it was introduced as a temporary two-year cut. <br />In the Midwest, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), citing declining ridership, began what <br />it called a six-month experimental closure of Blue Line operations on the Douglas Branch <br />beginning in April 2008. Perhaps unsurprisingly, in early December of the same year, the CTA <br />announced its decision to permanently discontinue Blue Line service on the Douglas branch. <br />Page I of 3 <br />