Transit today and tomorrow: the 2010s and the future of KT

The Bremerton Transportation Center as seen from above. Buses are staged on the transit deck, with ferries in the background. — *Kitsap Transit buses and ferries at the Bremerton Transportation Center.*

This is the final feature in our series of stories examining the history of Kitsap Transit. You can read Parts One, Two, and Three here.

By the mid-2010s, Kitsap County’s bus system was in dire need of an upgrade. Kitsap Transit Executive Director John Clauson would know – he wrote the schedules.

“The structure of our services is a structure that I put in place when I was doing that scheduling 40 years ago,” Clauson said.

Beginning in 2013, Kitsap Transit started the process of improving a bus network that hadn’t been substantively changed since its inception in 1983. The agency hired a consultant and started a study to find out what kinds of service upgrades riders wanted.

“I thought it would be valuable to have someone from the outside with a fresh set of eyes come in and look at what we're doing,” Clauson said. “Should we be doing something differently to make the system respond to the community's needs better?”

The comprehensive update was only one of a bevy of upgrades the agency would tackle in the 2010s and early 2020s. Coming out of the Great Recession, Kitsap Transit began to modernize its fleet, infrastructure, technology and communications. The decade brought the addition of fast ferries, new and improved transit centers, a more environmentally friendly bus fleet and a fresh brand overhaul.

Unfortunately, the planned service expansion was stopped short as the Kitsap Transit, and the world, reckoned with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Longtime employees retired. As we collectively started to put the pieces back together over the last few years, Kitsap Transit has continued to keep an eye on the future and projects that can help improve accessibility for our community.

A comprehensive service expansion

In 2016, Kitsap Transit started looking at changing the way it operated service. The agency’s revenues had recovered enough from the Great Recession to begin to explore service upgrades. The passage of the fast ferry ballot measure in November 2016 helped by creating a second pool of funds meant only for ferries, freeing up about $1.5 million for expansion.

But what did riders want to see? Where were people going, or not going? How could the system adapt to changing customer patterns and encourage new ridership?

Kitsap Transit spent 2017 asking the public these questions. The results were mixed: Sunday Service had been a frequently requested addition following its cut in 2009, but many non-riders said more frequency and extended service hours would get them to ride.

“What we heard, although it wasn't a resounding one over the other, the scales tipped a little bit towards more frequent, earlier and later evening service,” Clauson said.

KT and its consultant, Nelson/Nygaard, put together a plan to change routes, update route names and numbers, and add more frequent and later night service. The changes include shifting some route patterns and combining routes with one another.

The first route upgrades were rolled out in early 2019 and would’ve continued into the next decade, had it not been cut short by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cleaning and modernizing the fleet

At the same time, Kitsap Transit started making intentional changes to reduce its environmental impact.

In 2016, Kitsap Transit became one of only a handful of transit agencies in the nation to receive an ISO 14001 certification for its Charleston Base – a standard for measuring and reducing our impact on the environment. As part of the changes, the agency made comprehensive changes to its facilities, bus fleet, maintenance shop, and (later) ferry terminals. We upgraded our lighting to more energy-efficient LED lights, improved our training and response to chemical spills and limited the idling time of Worker/Driver buses on startup.

Kitsap Transit purchased its first battery-electric bus for testing in 2017; a second electric bus from a different manufacturer was delivered in 2020. A series of grants would continue to fund the greening of Kitsap Transit’s bus fleet – we received a $3.9 million federal grant for five electric buses in 2020, and a $10.4 million grant for 10 electric buses and charging infrastructure in 2022. By the end of 2024, we hope to have 30 battery-electric buses in operation between our Routed and Worker/Driver services, with charging stations at Charleston Base and North Base.

*Kitsap Transit’s second electric bus was built by Gillig. We anticipate having 30 electric buses in our fleet by the end of 2024.*

We also replaced our entire ACCESS fleet with propane vehicles and have begun to use R99 renewable diesel – fuel made from refining algae – in a portion of our routed fleet.

Kitsap Transit continues to explore new clean technologies, including hydrogen fuel-cell buses. Hydrogen fuel cells – which create electricity by combining hydrogen and oxygen through an electrolyte membrane – can power a vehicle and produce only water as an emission.

“These are all steps we’ve taken with the goal of reducing our carbon emissions and the impact on the environment,” Clauson said. “Wherever we can make improvements in that regard, we will.”

The operations side of the house wasn’t the only area to get a major upgrade over the last ten years. As Kitsap Transit grew, so did our need to tell our story.

*The Rich Passage 1 and Lady Swift bearing Kitsap Transit’s updated design and color scheme.*

We used the construction of two new fast ferries in 2018 as a chance to introduce a fresh brand and color scheme to our vehicles. The white, orange and blue livery debuted with the Reliance and Lady Swift in 2019 and would be applied to all of our new Routed and ACCESS coaches moving forward.

Kitsap Transit also invested in communications professionals, beginning in 2016 with the hiring of our first public information officer. We expanded our digital and social media presence and our use of surveys and rider alerts to inform and engage our customers.

Today, Kitsap Transit’s marketing team operates the agency’s blog, newsletter, social media pages, and has won two first-place awards from APTA for our marketing and communications in response to the pandemic.

New and improved facilities

In December 2011, Kitsap Transit was asked to vacate its longtime transit center at the Kitsap Mall in Silverdale. The transit center had been a staple of KT’s operations in Central Kitsap since 1985, and the sudden lease termination forced the agency to find a new transit center within 90 days.

“That was extremely disruptive to our riders and to the operation, and it was quite challenging for us to find another location where we could perform those transfers,” Clauson said.

To ensure stability and consistency for our riders, it was clear that Kitsap Transit would need to own all its facilities moving forward.

The first of these would be the North Viking Transit Center in Poulsbo, which opened in 2016. In addition to plenty of space for riders to wait for their buses, the transit featured 265-lot park & ride, upgraded operator facilities, a bus yard, and fueling and washing facilities.

*Kitsap Transit’s North Viking Park & Ride opened in Poulsbo in 2016.*

Next on the wish list: a transit center for Bremerton. For years, Kitsap Transit had parked in the parking lot of Wheaton Mall without a lease.

“We were there just at their good graces, and we could be asked to leave the next day,” Clauson said.

After years of design and construction work, the Wheaton Way Transit Center opened in 2019. In addition to a large park & ride, the transit center features electric vehicle charging stations, a bus pullout lane, a new traffic signal and locked bike storage.

In 2022, the agency broke ground on a new transit center in Silverdale that will be the first in Western Washington to feature inductive charging for our battery-electric buses. While still under construction, the Silverdale Transit Center is anticipated to open in 2024.

In addition to transit centers, Kitsap Transit also upgraded its ferry facilities and park & rides in the 2010s. The agency purchased the Annapolis dock in 2016, extended the gangway and added fenders to make the dock ADA-compliant. We continued to make agreements with local churches to host park & rides. As of 2023, three new dedicated park and rides in South Kitsap, Poulsbo and Bainbridge Island are either planned or under construction.

Fast ferries return to the Puget Sound

The 2010s marked the return of passenger-only fast ferries between Kitsap County and Seattle.

In 2016, for the third time in 20 years, Kitsap Transit asked voters to approve a sales tax increase to fund a fast ferry program. Voters finally agreed. Clauson believes that the new technology available and the long-running Rich Passage wake research project made a big difference in the vote’s outcome.

“It wasn’t until we had the scientific results of the RP1 that we could definitively tell the community, ‘We can run high speed,’” he said.

During the previous decade, Kitsap Transit had used federal and state funding to design and build the Rich Passage 1 (RP1). The RP1’s foil-assisted design was partly inspired by the Spirit of Kingston, another vessel that had been tested in Rich Passage. The foil raised part of the hull of the vessel out of the water, minimizing wake.

Kitsap Transit tested the vessel extensively throughout 2012 and 2013, recording the wakes and beach erosion while carrying passengers on a limited schedule. After testing, the team of scientists working on the project reported that they couldn’t distinguish between wake damage caused by the RP1 and normal weather events.

“They could actually track how the gravel moved on the beach with wakes, it was down to that level,” Clauson said. “We had biologists looking at the marine life and watching it and the eelgrass and kelp beds and crabs and everything.”

Fast ferry service between Bremerton and Seattle officially began on July 10, 2017. It was rough going for several months – with only one vessel on the route, Kitsap Transit had to cancel sailings any time the RP1 had a mechanical issue.

Kitsap Transit began fast ferry service from Kingston in 2018, using the Finest, a renovated ferry purchased from New York. Two backup vessels for the Bremerton route – the Reliance and Lady Swift – arrived in 2019, improving the service’s reliability. The custom-built bow-loading vessels Enetai and Commander were delivered in 2021 and 2022, respectively. Southworth-Seattle service began in March 2021.

Service from Bremerton expanded to a two-boat schedule in 2020. In December 2022, Kitsap Transit reached an agreement with Washington State Ferries (WSF) to run additional fast ferry sailings between Bremerton and Seattle until WSF can restore two-boat service on that route.

Kitsap Transit now operates the second-largest ferry system in Washington state, with a total of 10 vessels across five routes. Since the start of the process, Clauson said he’s proud of how Kitsap Transit has worked with the Rich Passage property owners and commuters to build a robust and reliable ferry system.

“We’ve been communicating with them through the whole study duration, keeping them well informed of everything that we were doing and the results of what we found,” Clauson said. “We wanted to be assured that we were not going to be the cause of damage.”

The COVID-19 pandemic and aftermath

As the decade came to a close, Kitsap Transit was already looking to the future – the agency had big plans to improve public transportation in Kitsap County over the next ten years. But life ground to a halt in March 2020 as the COVID-19 outbreak rapidly transformed into a global pandemic.

Businesses, schools and government facilities closed. Millions of workers transitioned to working from home overnight, and bus and ferry ridership plummeted. Kitsap Transit cut service for commuter runs and its lowest-ridership routes, capped capacity on its buses and ferries and instituted a rigorous new cleaning regimen to help curb the spread of infection.

“There were a number of folks that were ordered to stay home, but there was still a need for people to get to grocery stores and drugstores, and essential workers,” Clauson said. “We needed to keep some level of service going.”

*A maintenance employee wears a mask at Kitsap Transit’s bus yard on Charleston Boulevard.*

To keep transporting riders safely, Kitsap Transit suspended fares, purchased thousands of masks and bottles of hand sanitizer to distribute for free, installed plexiglass barriers on all of its buses and implemented rear-door boarding. Essential workers were offered priority boarding on KT fast ferries.

Later, the agency bought and installed UV air scrubbers for all its buses and ferries. In early 2021, as vaccines were starting to be made available to the general public, Kitsap Transit partnered with Peninsula Community Health Services to host a vaccine clinic at its Gateway Center facility and offered free rides to other vaccine clinics around the county. A marketing campaign was launched to inform the public about these efforts.

*Kitsap Transit worked with Peninsula Community Health Services to host vaccine clinics during the pandemic.*

Importantly, Kitsap Transit didn’t lay off during the pandemic. Instead, the agency staged backup buses throughout its service area. If a reduced-capacity bus filled up, the extra buses would be dispatched pick up any remaining passengers. This plan made sure riders weren’t left behind, and also offered shifts to operators who previously drove commuter routes.

“I did not want to lay anyone off,” Clauson said.

The pandemic delayed almost all the planned bus service improvements Kitsap Transit had worked for years to plan and implement. Many operators who worked part-time or were close to retirement stepped away. As the country and world started to reopen (KT buses and ferries returned to full capacity in July 2021), the agency would be faced with the challenge of replacing its workforce and restoring service to pre-2020 levels.

KT and the future of public transportation in Kitsap County

On September 24, 2023, Kitsap Transit operated bus service on a Sunday for the first time in more than 10 years. While this was an important achievement, we know there’s still work to do. We are still working to implement the bus service improvements that were planned before the COVID-19 pandemic, but operator recruitment has been the biggest hurdle.

To help address the shortage, Kitsap Transit’s Board of Commissioners approved a $7,000 signing bonus, and the agency has spent considerable marketing budget and time on campaigns aimed at new hires. We’ve improved our training processes, including a brand-new bus simulator, to make onboarding quicker and less intimidating.

The end goal, as we look forward toward the next forty years of Kitsap Transit, is a robust and reliable public transportation that works for all. We want to explore new transit options like On-Demand service and Bus Rapid Transit.

“We want to implement Sunday service as we have operators to do it, as well as replace the service that we reduced because of COVID,” Clauson said. “And then hopefully we'll continue down that path of more frequent service.”

*An aerial view of the Silverdale Transit Center under construction.*

We have other big ideas and projects in the works for the future, including new transit centers in Port Orchard and West Bremerton, a dedicated marine maintenance facility, and a passenger-only ferry dock on the Seattle waterfront. We’re designing all-electric fast ferries and foot ferries, and continuing to explore newer, cleaner forms of energy like hydrogen fuel-cell buses.

For 40 years, we’ve been proud to connect communities across Kitsap County. From its earliest days at a run-down bus yard in Charleston, Kitsap Transit has grown into a regional, multi-modal transit agency with more than 500 employees.

But the story of our last 40 years would not be possible without the incredible people who have worked for Kitsap Transit: bus operators and dispatchers, maintenance staff and facilities workers, deckhands and captains, administrative staff and customer service representatives.

And it would not have been possible without our customers, the people who live, work and rely on public transportation in Kitsap County. You have kept our wheels turning for 40 years, and we’re excited to serve you for the next 40.