Ridership and Route

Metro Vanpool represents a significant investment of resources from King County Metro, local employers, and individual participants. To ensure a good return on this investment, Metro has ridership requirements and reviews group routes to ensure each group operates as efficiently as possible.

King County Metro Vanpool ridership requirements are based on the number of full-time riders in a group. Riders are considered “full time” if they ride on most days, for most of the commute, and pay a full-time fare. Riders are considered “part time” if they ride fewer than half the weekly trips or less than half the distance, and pay the part-time fare. Two part-time riders may count toward the ridership requirements.

Maintaining an efficient route

Program staff review proposed group routes and meeting locations to verify accurate round-trip miles and ensure efficient use of the vehicle by reviewing where riders live, work, and meet the vehicle. Groups may be required to revise inefficient routes.

Ridership requirements

Regardless of vehicle size, each commute trip must include a minimum of three (3) participants. Beyond that, groups should aim to operate with full vehicles as often as possible.

Groups that have a large number of hybrid workers or part-time riders may “oversubscribe” their group to include more potential riders than seats.

Building strong ridership

Maintaining the right number of riders, drivers, and bookkeepers is critical, as groups with unfilled roles or low ridership may be folded. Follow these tips to keep your group going strong:

Ensure the group has enough drivers to provide consistent daily operation in the absence of the primary driver. While 2 drivers is the minimum, more is better. In some groups, everyone is a backup driver.
If you regularly have empty seats in your vehicle, it is time to recruit more participants. In the short term, this can reduce fares for everyone. In the long term, it can support minimum ridership levels should you lose riders.
Everyone should pitch in to find new riders when needed — use our recruiting tips and tricks.
You can also designate a recruiting coordinator, usually the public contact, to use RideshareOnline.com and/or work with Metro to build ridership.
Many groups oversubscribe riders to support hybrid work and part-time participants. Larger vehicles may be available upon request.

In the event your group drops below the minimum ridership requirements, the Vanpool office will be in touch to provide recruiting assistance as well as to provide guidance on how much time the group will have to recruit additional riders.

Trading for a larger or smaller vehicle

If the number of participants in your group changes, you may want to trade to a larger or smaller vehicle. This may be an option; contact the Vanpool office for assistance. Vehicle assignments are based on a variety of factors such as commute length, ridership levels, and operating schedule.

What if I leave the program or change groups?

All Riders

Notify your bookkeeper at least 15 days before leaving the group and pay your fares during the 15-day period. Your fare may be prorated according to appropriate daily fare schedule.

Bookkeepers

Notify your group that they will need to identify a new bookkeeper. Notify the Vanpool office.

Drivers

Notify the backup drivers, bookkeeper and group as soon as possible. Notify the Vanpool office.

Note: Any driver who leaves the program must contact the Vanpool office for approval before they may drive a Metro vehicle again. If you leave a group to join another, make sure you contact us to ensure driver approval remains active. Also notify Metro if you change your employer, worksite, name, address or phone numbers.

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