The Transit Riders Union is an independent, democratic, member-run union of transit riders organizing for better public transit in Seattle, King County and beyond. Through our organizing efforts we won a low income fare! We invite you to join us and fight for the future of public transit!
The King County Metro 8 bus is among Seattle’s most popular routes, yet it’s also one of the most delayed. Serving as an essential east-west link, it connects neighborhoods like Lower Queen Anne/Uptown, Belltown, South Lake Union, Capitol Hill, Madison Valley, and the Central District. Every day, over 5,000 individuals rely on it for commuting, running errands, and various other journeys. However, these trips are becoming more and more delayed. TAKE ACTION NOW
During weekday peak hours, eastbound Route 8 buses are often delayed by more than 30 minutes by the time they reach Capitol Hill. This transforms a scheduled 17-minute journey into almost 50 minutes. Given that these buses are usually at full capacity, thousands of passengers face extended wait times both for the bus to arrive and for their trips to conclude in both directions. This consistent delay has even earned the route a nickname: the “L8”.
We can fix this! It’s clear that the majority of delay on this route occurs on Denny Way in SLU, as car drivers funnel onto the I-5. Regular riders of the 8 know that they can typically walk faster than the bus until just after Fairview Ave, where a short stretch of bus lane provides some relief. This bus lane clearly works — let’s expand it!
We urge the Seattle Department of Transportation and King County Metro to prolong the eastbound bus lanes throughout Denny Way. A simple addition of red paint from 1st Ave to Fairview could ensure smoother transit for thousands of passengers and dozens of drivers/buses along this vital route. Importantly, the anticipated improvements in reliability and speed from these extended lanes could encourage many to switch from cars to the more efficient Route 8.
You can help! Email the city and King County officials to make this happen!
At TRU’s September Membership Meeting, we voted on candidate endorsements for the upcoming general election. Election day is Tuesday, November 7th, but ballots will arrive in the mail a couple weeks before that. We encourage you to support and vote for the following candidates. If you want a voice and a vote in future endorsements, join TRU today!
King County Council:
District 2: Girmay Zahilay
District 4: Sarah Reyneveld
District 8: Teresa Mosqueda
Seattle City Council:
District 1: Maren Costa
District 2: Tammy Morales
District 3: Alex Hudson
District 4: Ron Davis
District 5: ChrisTiana ObeySumner
Bellevue:
Position 3: Mo Malakoutian
Position 5: Janice Zahn
Bothell:
Position 2: Mason Thompson
Position 4: Carston Curd
Position 6: Amanda Dodd
Burien:
Position 2: Cydney Moore
Position 4: Patricia Hudson
Position 6: Krystal Marx
Issaquah:
Position 6: Victoria Hunt
Kenmore:
Position 1: Melanie O’Cain
Position 7: Corina Pfeil
Kent:
Position 3: John Boyd
Kirkland:
Position 2: Kelli Curtis
Position 4: John Tymczyszyn
Position 6: Amy Falcone
Redmond:
Mayor: Jeralee Anderson
Position 1: Osman Salahuddin
Position 3: Jessica Forsythe
Position 5: Vanessa Kritzer –
Position 7: Angie Nuevacamina
Renton:
Mayor: Kim Monroe
SeaTac:
Position 1: Senayet Negusse
Position 3: Elizabeth Greninger
Position 7: Joe Vinson
Shoreline:
Position 6: Betsy Robertson
Tukwila:
Mayor: Kate Kruller
Position 2: Armen Papyan
Northshore School District:
Position 3: Han Tran
At TRU’s June Membership Meeting last week, we voted on candidate endorsements for the upcoming primary elections. Election day is Tuesday, August 1st, but ballots will arrive in the mail a couple weeks before that. Races appear on the primary ballot only if there are at least three contenders. We did not weigh in on all primary races, and (apart from three early endorsements) we only considered candidates who returned a completed questionnaire. TRU will do a second round of endorsements in September for the general election. We encourage you to support and vote for the following candidates:
King County Council:
District 2: Girmay Zahilay
District 4: Sarah Reyneveld
District 8: Teresa Mosqueda
Seattle City Council:
District 1: Maren Costa
District 2: Tammy Morales
District 3: Andrew Ashiofu
District 4: Ron Davis
District 5: Tye Reed
Other Cities:
Burien Position 2: Cydney Moore
Issaquah Position 6: Victoria Hunt
Kenmore Position 7: Corina Pfeil
Kirkland Position 2: Kelli Curtis
Earlier this year, TRU asked renters who recently received notice of a rent increase to fill out a short survey. This week, we’re publishing a report on the results! Here’s a summary of what we found, and you can read or download the full report here.
Monday night, we delivered a coalition letter and a petition signed by hundreds of Burien residents, workers, and community leaders to the Burien City Council, urging them to raise the minimum wage to match neighboring cities like SeaTac, Tukwila, and Seattle. The public comment period was packed with testimony about why passing this legislation is urgent. Here’s what Olivia had to say:
“I’m 19 and I’ve lived in Burien for about ten years. I graduated from a local high school and I’m currently a fast food employee. I’m lucky enough that I’m able to stay with my mom and help out when I can but currently I can only pay a quarter of the $2,000 we pay for rent. I help with groceries and gas, and even with two sources of income we’re having trouble trying to make ends meet. We make too little to go on trips or visit family, but we make too much to apply for certain financial aids for college. I’m having to look for work outside of Burien just so I can help out more in my household. Please see the need that Burien workers are sharing with you and raise the wage!”
Supporters shared stories about how hard it is to miss your children’s school functions because you have to work multiple jobs to pay the bills. About how low wages force families to move, impacting their kids’ well-being and education. About how raising the minimum wage will level the playing field for employers who want to do the right thing.
Let’s make Burien the fourth city in King County to raise the wage! Now we’re waiting for the council to put this topic on the agenda & direct staff to start drawing up legislation — stay tuned for next steps, sign and share our petition with anyone you know who lives or works in Burien!
It’s time to celebrate our first big victories of 2023! Yesterday, Seattle took a major leap toward reining in the punitive fees that more and more renters, especially those with corporate landlords, are facing in this housing market:
With a 7-2 vote, the city council passed legislation that bans Notice Delivery Fees. These arbitrary charges, often as much as $50 or $75, are tacked on whenever a landlord pins a notice to a tenant’s door. Read more about the problem of rental “junk fees” here.
And…. Drumroll… after plenty of contentious debate, Seattle joined the South King County cities of Auburn and Burien and capped late fees at $10 per month, one of the strongest standards in the nation!
But there’s more. Last week in SeaTac, after months of deliberation, with much testimony & pressure from renters and community members, the SeaTac City Council took a final vote on new protections for renters! Here’s what they passed:
These new protections for SeaTac renters will go into effect in mid-May.
THANK YOU to everyone who helped to make these victories possible! TRU and the Stay Housed Stay Healthy Coalition are proud to have championed this legislation in Seattle and SeaTac. Join us as we continue the fight for stronger renter protections and stable, affordable housing across King County!
Late last year, we began laying foundations for a workers’ rights campaign in south King County. We surveyed nearly a hundred workers at and around Tukwila’s Westfield Southcenter Mall, one of the largest retail shopping centers in Washington state. Through conversations with workers, local immigrant-owned businesses, and organizations rooted in Tukwila’s diverse communities, we decided to take on an ambitious campaign to raise Tukwila’s minimum wage to match the higher minimum wages in neighboring SeaTac and Seattle.
We built a broad community-labor coalition and mobilized our members and volunteers for a citywide door knocking operation, talking with Tukwila residents about their struggles and the need for higher wages, and gathering thousands of petition signatures to qualify for the November ballot. We did it! Tukwila voters passed our measure in a landslide, with over 82% voting yes. Tukwila’s minimum wage will rise to about $19 an hour in July 2023, more than a 30% raise from the 2022 statewide minimum wage of $14.49. Our measure also includes an “access to hours” policy that requires employers to offer available hours to existing part-time employees before new hiring, to prevent corporations from cutting workers’ hours to avoid having to provide benefits.
We’re now discussing how to continue organizing with Tukwila workers and residents next year to ensure the new law is enforced and to fight for further gains, and how to spread the movement to other cities across King County.
This year, TRU continued working with allies in the Stay Housed Stay Healthy coalition, which we helped to build in 2021. We organized with renters and fought for stronger tenant protections in cities across King County. This work is especially timely as median rents skyrocketed this year, in many cities rising 20-30% since before the pandemic. By door knocking at apartment buildings and mobilizing renters and allies to put pressure on elected officials, we’ve won crucial protections in five cities this year. Our work in the city of Kenmore was covered in The Seattle Times earlier this year. We plan to continue this vital work in more King County cities, including SeaTac and Tukwila, in 2023.
Washington state has long had the most regressive tax system in the country. After dramatic tax battles with Amazon and Seattle’s corporate class going back to 2017, in 2020 TRU played an instrumental role in winning a big business tax (“JumpStart Seattle”) targeting the tech sector, which raised over $250 million in its first year— revenue that helped Seattle weather the COVID-19 crash, is now funding affordable housing and other community priorities, and will be key to sustaining basic services during the coming economic downturn and budget crisis. Last year we won a commitment from the city council to continue making our tax system more just, and this year the city laid foundations for a new Progressive Revenue Task Force! TRU has a seat on this workgroup, which convened this fall and will continue its work through spring of 2023.
The pandemic has been brutal for people experiencing homelessness. This year, TRU’s camp outreach project has turned tens of thousands of dollars into food, propane, batteries, water and other basic necessities for our neighbors surviving outside. This project is powered by TRU members’ volunteer labor, cooking meals and visiting camps every weekend, and funded entirely by individual donations from TRU members and supporters.
TRU is part of the House Our Neighbors coalition, which collected signatures this year for a Seattle Social Housing initiative and qualified for the ballot! Next February, Seattle voters will decide whether to create a Public Development Authority to build affordable mixed-income housing on the model of Vienna and other cities worldwide with large non-market public housing sectors.
TRU is a proud member of the Seattle Solidarity Budget coalition, which grew out of the 2020 uprisings in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. This year the coalition’s priorities included fighting for living wages for human services workers, opposing police-based responses to the homelessness crisis, transportation investments to end deaths and injuries due to vehicle traffic, massively increasing the pace of affordable housing construction, and fully funding Seattle’s Green New Deal.
Last year, we learned that Amazon was scoping sites in Seattle for new warehouses, including two sites near a light rail and bus station in the historically Black and Asian neighborhood of Mt. Baker. As Consumer Reports recently showed, Amazon opens warehouses in low-income and Black, brown and immigrant communities, with disastrous effects on their health and safety. We helped to build and support a coalition opposing these plans. In July, when news broke of a planned rally, Amazon announced that it no longer intends to build warehouses in South Seattle! Now the coalition is pushing to get those sites dedicated to neighborhood-supported uses such as affordable housing to prevent Amazon from changing its mind in the future.
The Transit Riders Union made the following endorsements at our September Membership Meeting. Ballots are mailed on October 19th. Remember to Vote by November 8th!
City of Tukwila Initiative Measure #1: Yes
King County Charter Amendment #1: Yes
Seattle Measure 1B (Rank Choice Voting): Yes
11th LD, Pos. 1: David Hackney
30th LD, Senate: Claire Wilson
34th LD, Senate: Joe Nguyen
34th LD, Pos. 1: Leah Griffin
36th LD, Senate: Noel Frame
36th LD, Pos. 1: Julia Reed
37th LD, Senate: Rebecca Saldaña
37th LD, Pos. 2: Emijah Smith
42nd LD, Senate: Sharon Shewmake
43rd LD, Pos. 1: Nicole Macri
43rd LD, Pos. 2: Frank Chopp
46th LD, Pos. 2: Darya Farivar
47th LD, Pos. 2: Shukri Olow
48th LD, Senate: Patty Kuderer
King County Prosecutor: Leesa Manion
Seattle Municipal Court Judge: Pooja Vaddadi
Tuesday evening, the Redmond City Council heard testimony from renters in crisis and members of the Stay Housed Stay Healthy coalition. They debated and finally voted 6-1 to pass these important protections:
There’s much more we want them to do, but this is a really great start! Enormous rent increases and displacement are happening now all over King County, and these protections will help to mitigate the harm to Redmond families and communities.
What’s next for the Stay Housed Stay Healthy coalition? We are expecting the Kirkland City Council to vote on a similar set of protections on Wednesday, August 3rd. And we are expecting Kenmore (which already passed the above protections) to vote on a second ordinance next Monday, July 25th, including a local Just Cause Eviction law that applies to all lease types, closing some gaping loopholes in the statewide law.
TRU and the Stay Housed Stay Healthy coalition will continue working to pass strong permanent renter protections in cities all across King County!
Photo by Tri Pham
Over the past three months, we’ve been hard at work gathering signatures to win a living wage for Tukwila workers. As you may have seen in The Seattle Times, last week we learned that we submitted more than enough signatures to qualify for the ballot!
Thank you so much to everyone who helped with this achievement: all the volunteers who knocked doors, entered data and made phone calls; our hard-working TRU organizers; allied groups that endorsed the campaign & gathered signatures; everyone who’s donated so far— and, of course, all the Tukwila residents who signed the petition and all the Tukwila workers who spoke up about why it’s time for higher wages. Together we will win on election day!!!
But… It’s going to be a fight. We expect to be far outspent by corporate interests that care way more about maximizing their profits than the well-being of their workers. They’ll try to scare Tukwila voters into rejecting a minimum wage increase— just like they tried to do when SeaTac and Seattle were fighting for the same thing. We need to run a super strong Get-Out-The-Vote campaign this fall to counter their misinformation, and for that we need to raise a lot more money than we have on hand right now. To help us off to a solid start, please consider making a donation of $10, $100 or $1000 now in honor of TRU’s 10th birthday!
The Transit Riders Union made the following endorsements at our June Membership Meeting. Remember to Vote by August 2nd, 2022!
11th LD, Pos. 1: David Hackney
30th LD, Senate: Claire Wilson
34th LD, Senate: Joe Nguyen
34th LD, Pos. 1: Leah Griffin
36th LD, Senate: Noel Frame
36th LD, Pos. 1: Julia Reed & Nicole Gomez
37th LD, Senate: Rebecca Saldana
37th LD, Pos. 2: Andrew Ashiofu
43rd LD, Pos. 1: Nicole Macri
43rd LD, Pos. 2: Frank Chopp
46th LD, Pos. 1: Hadeel Jeanne
46th LD, Pos. 2: Darya Farivar & Melissa Taylor
47th LD, Pos. 2: Shukri Olow
48th LD, Senate: Patty Kuderer
Congress WA-09: Stephanie Gallardo
Back in March, the University of Washington finally agreed to provide fully-subsidized, employer-paid transit passes to ALL its employees. This was the result of a multi-year pressure campaign that TRU was deeply involved in, bringing together UW workers, labor unions, community allies, and transit and environmental advocates. It took years of pressure, from the inside and the outside, to push the UW to fully adopt this common sense pro-climate, pro-worker policy. The new benefit goes into effect on July 1! Read about how we got here in The Stranger, and celebrate with us on June 30!
On Saturday, March 26, we launched a new campaign called Raise the Wage Tukwila! Tukwila is one of the largest job centers in the state, with thousands of low-wage retail and food service jobs at and around Southcenter Mall. The neighboring cities of SeaTac and Seattle have higher minimum wages of over $17, but in Tukwila many workers are still making the statewide minimum wage of $14.49. That’s just not enough.
We need to collect signatures of thousands of Tukwila voters before the end of June to qualify for the November ballot. Check out our campaign website and sign up to volunteer at RaiseTheWageTukwila.org, and read more in The Seattle Times and MyNorthwest. Together let’s Raise the Wage!
Kenmore Councilmember Corina Pfeil. Ellen M. Banner, The Seattle Times: click through to source article.
Rents aren’t just rising in Seattle, they’re going up fast all across King County. That’s a big problem. Where are low-income renters supposed to go?
TRU and our allies in the Stay Housed Stay Healthy coalition are rising to the challenge and organizing to pass stronger permanent renter protections in multiple King County cities. Earlier this month, the city of Kenmore took a huge step forward. Check out this great article in The Seattle Times that highlights our work.
On Valentine’s Day, council members heard testimony from Kenmore renters and members of Stay Housed Stay Healthy, and devoted hours to discussing a long list of possible protections. They agreed to move forward with a number of them, including requiring longer notice of significant rent increases and capping move-in fees and late fees. Others they decided to study further. We expect a first piece of legislation to be passed later this month, and hopefully a second later in the spring. The Seattle Times article features stories from Kenmore renters and also one of the champions of our legislation, Councilmember Corina Pfeil:
“Several years ago, homelessness knocked on Corina Pfeil’s door. When her landlord raised her rent $300, Pfeil couldn’t pay, nor could she quickly find a cheaper place in Kenmore, where she’d lived for three decades.
‘I thought I was going to end up in a shelter,’ possibly separated from her older son, who was 18 and who has autism, she recalled.
That didn’t happen, thanks to a last-minute negotiation. But the upsetting incident stayed with Pfeil, who now serves on the Kenmore City Council and is pushing to pass a batch of new tenant protections. She still rents, in a sprawling complex tucked behind pine trees.
‘We have to be willing to take a hard look at the inequities in our community,” she said. “We’re a community with haves and have-nots.‘”
TRU and Stay Housed Stay Healthy will be working over the next few months to pass strong legislation in Kenmore, which will help to propel forward our work in other cities later this year.
The COVID-19 pandemic left many thousands of King County households unable to pay rent and at risk of eviction. This year, TRU stepped up to build and lead a countywide coalition called Stay Housed Stay Healthy. We fought for emergency protections to keep renters in their homes, and for stronger permanent protections to shift the balance of power between renters and landlords for good. We organized with renters and successfully passed powerful legislation in jurisdictions around King County:
Seattle: Closed the “lease loophole” in Seattle’s Just Cause Eviction Ordinance, ensuring that ALL renters are protected from arbitrary & unjust evictions. Supported legislation requiring six-months notice of rent increases and landlord-paid relocation assistance if a tenant has to move after a rent increase of 10% or more.
King County Council: Won a pathbreaking package of renter protections for unincorporated areas of the county like Skyway and White Center, including:
This legislation creates a high standard we’ll work to match in cities around King County in 2022.
TRU, together with the ACLU of Washington and the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, brought a successful lawsuit to knock the “Compassion Seattle” initiative off the ballot. In addition to being illegal and misleading, this measure was far from a good faith effort to address the homelessness crisis. Instead, it was a cynical unfunded mandate backed by big business interests that don’t want to pay their taxes. TRU also joined the House Our Neighbors coalition to put forward real solutions: housing, shelter & services at scale.
Amazon has accumulated enormous power over our economy and our lives. But what is a monopoly? What are its dangers and how are we impacted as residents, consumers and workers? And what can we do about it? TRU co-hosted a teach-in with Puget Sound Sage, with special guests from the Washington State Attorney General’s Office Antitrust Division, to dig into these timely questions.
The remote legislative session allowed TRU’s members and supporters to participate as never before. We set up many virtual meetings with individual legislators, testified at hearings, signed in “PRO” or “CON” on bills, sent emails and made phone calls. Working with allies, TRU’s pressure helped to win big victories like renter protections, criminal-legal system reform, the HEAL Act, Working Families Tax Credit and a capital gains tax.
TRU is a core member of the Solidarity Budget coalition, fighting for a vision of an equitable city where all of us can thrive. Thanks to this powerful coalition work, Seattle is the only city in the U.S. to shrink its policing budget two years running. Our pressure helped to restore the JumpStart Seattle corporate tax revenue to its intended purposes, including major ongoing investments in new affordable housing and equitable development. With the MASS coalition, we expanded investments in safe streets for walking, biking and rolling. And more!
The pandemic has been especially hard on homeless people, and homeless deaths are near a record high. This year, TRU’s camp outreach project turned over $50,000 into food, propane, batteries, water and other basic necessities for our neighbors sleeping outside. This project is powered by TRU members’ volunteer labor, cooking meals and visiting camps every weekend, and funded entirely by individual donations from TRU members and supporters.
When refugee families began arriving in the Seattle area from Afghanistan this fall, TRU stepped up. We raised over $2,500 from individual donations from our members and supporters, and used these funds to purchase loaded adult and youth ORCA passes for the Muslim Community Resource Center to give to refugees in need of transportation in their new home.
TRU is conducting a project in order to better understand the issues affecting Tukwila workers and residents. Do you live or work in Tukwila, or have friends or family who do? Invite them to take our 5-minute survey:
For Tukwila workers: bit.ly/tukwila-jobs
For Tukwila residents: bit.ly/tukwila-resident
Here is who we recommend voting for in the 2021 General Election:
King County
Seattle
Port of Seattle
Bellevue
Bothell
Burien
Kenmore
Kent
Kirkland
Issaquah
Renton
Tukwila
Federal Way
Lake Forest Park
SeaTac
Port of Edmonds
On Tuesday afternoon, after hours of public comment & debate, the King County Council voted 6-3 to pass a pathbreaking package of renter protections, including:
This legislation will protect renters in unincorporated areas of King County like Skyway and White Center, home to historically underserved Black and brown and low-income communities. It also creates a high standard that we can now work to match in cities around the county! Read more in The Stranger and The Seattle Times.
This major victory wouldn’t have been possible without sustained pressure from the Stay Housed Stay Healthy coalition & from all the TRU members and allies who sent emails, made phone calls, testified at council meetings and amplified our message on social media. THANK YOU!!! Together we make progress!!!
