Vote YES on Prop 1to renew and expand the Seattle Transit Measure

More buses, and more of them at the hours people actually need to ride. Metro trips paid for by the measure go from 180,000 a year to about 275,000, 95,000 more than the current STM, and 84% of that new service lands off-peak: nights, weekends, and midday.

For a nurse starting a shift at six in the morning, that is the difference between catching a bus and making a car payment. For a family heading to the park on a Saturday, it's a bus every 15 minutes instead of every half hour. For someone leaving a restaurant job at midnight, it's a ride home that still exists.

It also brings Seattle to 89% completion of its Frequent Transit Network, doubles free ORCA passes from 10,000 to 22,000, and pays for the planning and design work around future light rail stations at Graham Street, West Seattle, and Ballard.

Most directly, the people who depend on the bus: riders with disabilities, seniors, young people not old enough to drive, and working families for whom a second car isn't realistic. The expanded ORCA program puts free passes in the hands of low-income riders, Housing Choice Voucher participants, preschool families, and Seattle Promise scholars.

The off-peak service is what matters for shift workers, for families getting around on the weekend, and for anyone coming home late at night.

And it helps people who never set foot on a bus. Every trip that happens on transit is a car that isn't ahead of you in traffic, and cleaner air for everyone in the city.

About $29 a year for the median two-person household in Seattle, less than one bus fare a month.

The measure raises the dedicated transit sales tax from 0.15% to 0.3%, which works out to about 3 cents on a $10 purchase, up from about 1.5 cents today. Groceries and prescription medications aren't subject to sales tax in Washington, so the things families buy every week aren't part of it.

Anyone who makes a taxable purchase inside Seattle city limits, including visitors, commuters, and people passing through. Tourists, conference-goers, and shoppers who live elsewhere all pay it, which means a real share of the revenue comes from people who don't live here but use the city all the same.

Because it's one of the few tools state law gives a city to pay for bus service. Washington tightly limits how cities can raise transit money. A sales tax through a transportation benefit district is the main option available at this scale, and it's what Seattle voters approved in 2014 and again in 2020. A city income tax isn't permitted, and property tax capacity is already committed elsewhere.

A sales tax isn't the most progressive way to raise revenue, and we'd take better options if the state offered them. But the alternative falls harder on the people who can least afford it: a city where bus service shrinks and more households are pushed into owning a car, which costs thousands of dollars a year, not tens.

The current measure expires in 2027. Without renewal, all current STM funding would be cut. Seattle would lose the service it has gained since 2020, including more frequent buses, streetcar operations, and discounted ORCA passes, along with every added trip and access program this renewal would fund.

Yes. The 2020 version passed with over 80% voter support and delivered results you can point to: Route 60, for example, now runs every 15 minutes on weekends instead of every 30.

SDOT keeps the official page for the renewal, including the spending plan and the ordinance the Council sent to the ballot: 2026 Seattle Transit Measure Renewal.

The City Council's page on the measure is here, and background on the existing program is on SDOT's Seattle Transit Measure page.