King County Metro
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A King County Metro coach operating on Route 41, in the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel.
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| Slogan | We'll Get You There. |
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| Parent | King County Department of Transportation |
| Founded | January 1, 1973 44 years ago |
| Headquarters | 201 S. Jackson St., Seattle |
| Locale | King County, Washington |
| Service area | King County, Washington |
| Service type | Transit bus |
| Alliance | Sound Transit |
| Routes | 215 (excluding routes operated by Metro under contract for another agency) |
| Stops | 8,521 (year-end 2012) |
| Hubs | 13 transit centers |
| Fleet | 1,835 |
| Daily ridership | 394,500 |
| Fuel type | Battery electric, Diesel, Diesel-electric hybrid, Electric trolleybus |
| Chief executive | Rob Gannon, General Manager |
| Website | Metro Online |
King County Metro, officially the King County Department of Transportation Metro Transit Division or Metro for short, is the public transit authority of King County, Washington. It began operations on January 1, 1973, but can trace its roots to Seattle Transit, founded in 1939, and Overlake Transit Service, founded in 1927.
Metro is the eighth-largest transit bus agency in the United States, carrying an average of 395,000 passengers each weekday on 215 routes. Metro employs 2,716 full-time and part-time operators and operates 1,882 buses.
Metro is also contracted to operate and maintain Sound Transit’s Central Link light rail line and eight of the agency's Sound Transit Express bus routes along with the Seattle Streetcar lines owned by the City of Seattle.
The Municipality of Metropolitan Seattle, was created by a local referendum in 1958 authorized to manage regional wastewater and water quality issues in King County. After two failed attempts to enable it to build a regional rapid transit system, it was authorized to operate a regional bus system in 1972. The bus system was known as Metro Transit and began operations in 1973. Its operations subsumed the Seattle Transit System, formerly under the purview of the City of Seattle and the Metropolitan Transit Corporation, a private company serving suburban cities in King County. In the early 1970s, the private Metropolitan faced bankruptcy because of low ridership. King County voters authorized Metro to buy Metropolitan and operate the county's mass transit bus system.
The Municipality of Metropolitan Seattle was overseen by a federated board of elected officials, composed of elected officials from cities throughout the region. Its representation structure was ruled unconstitutional in 1990. In 1992, after gaining approval by popular vote, the municipality's roles and authorities were assumed by the government of King County. The municipality's transit operations was a stand-alone department within the county until 1996, when it became a division of the newly created King County Department of Transportation.
After completion of the downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel project, attention was drawn again to developing a regional rail system. This interest led to the formation of the Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority (more commonly known as Sound Transit) which holds primary responsibility for planning and building high capacity transit in the counties of King, Pierce and Snohomish, in western Washington state.
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