Council approves legislation to boost reporting, transparency around ‘ghost buses’

March 4, 2025

The King County Council on Tuesday approved legislation asking Metro to report on so-called ghost buses, also known as unplanned trip cancellations, to boost transparency and make transit more reliable for riders across King County.

“Nothing is more frustrating than standing at a bus stop, waiting for a bus that is never going to come — maybe in the rain, in the dark, maybe now you’re late to work, missed a doctor’s appointment, or lost time that you could have been doing something important,” said Councilmember Claudia Balducci, who sponsored and proposed the legislation and was joined by Councilmembers Sarah Perry and Jorge Barón as co-sponsors. “As a regular transit rider myself, I know how disruptive and confusing it can be when a scheduled bus doesn’t show up. The core of a useful, robust transit system is reliability and frequency. With this legislation, we’re digging into how we can ensure reliability so that all transit riders reach their destination on time.”

An unplanned trip cancellation – when a bus never leaves the base for its route, not just missing a stop – can be due to a variety of factors, but the approved motion specifically asks Metro to do a better job of reporting out on these cancellations to the public. As part of that, it asks Metro to provide updates to Council on how it is or could be providing information to riders in real time, either directly or through third-party apps, on such cancellations, as well as incorporating metrics on them into both the 2025 System Evaluation Report and the next update of Metro Transit’s framework for how the agency makes changes to transit service, called the Service Guidelines.

“For transit riders, the reason a bus doesn’t come is much less important than the fact that their commute is impacted unexpectedly,” Barón said. “When our buses show up when we say they will, we can bring more people aboard public transit and make headway in meeting our environmental goals. Metro delivers the vast majority of service as planned, but this motion asks Metro to collect more comprehensive data on unplanned trip cancellations and more fully capture the service that riders experience so we can know where to grow. I appreciate Councilmember Balducci bringing this forward and look forward to continued conversations about transit reliability in our region.”

"I'm excited to support this legislation, particularly as we continue to have conversations about changes in transit ridership trends following the pandemic and how we use that data to best serve the needs of our growing county" Perry said. "The impacts of unplanned trip cancellations can feel especially great to residents in my district where many bus routes operate at a low frequency, so I'm excited about this opportunity to improve reporting on the issue and ultimately increase reliability across the entire Metro transit system."