Week of July 10, 2006

The many shades of Metro

Sometime in the next year, something will happen at King County Metro Transit that hasn’t happened for 20 years – all of the buses will be painted in the same base color scheme.

While teal, blue and green – with yellow highlights – has been Metro’s official colors for 10 years, there is variation within the 1,316-bus fleet. That is mainly because Metro mechanics do such a good job keeping older buses running that there are still buses on the road painted with the second version of Metro’s original “sunrise” color scheme.

“The MAN articulated trolley is the oldest bus running in our fleet,” said Mike Voris, a Vehicle Maintenance supervisor. “Most are still painted white with the brown, yellow and ochre stripes on the side. There are probably less than 30 on the road right now, and they should all be retired within the next 12 months.”

The Breda dual-power buses were originally ordered with white paint and a gray lower body. They ran in the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel and above ground until January 2005, when they were retired as dual-power buses. A number of these buses had been re-painted with the current colors, and the 59 Bredas that were recently converted into strictly electric trolley buses were drawn from this group.

Voris said the white-with-stripes was Metro’s original color scheme when it was created as a countywide bus agency in 1973. Metro blended together Seattle Transit and the suburban Metropolitan Transit Corporation. At the time of the merger, most Seattle Transit buses were red and gray. But, Metropolitan buses were white and green. He said Metro wanted a new image and a consistent look, so the Seattle Transit and Metropolitan buses inherited by Metro were re-painted in a clean-looking white scheme like most of the other major transit agencies in the nation. The first brand-new buses Metro purchased arrived in 1976 with the white-striped paint job.

By the mid-1990s, Metro knew it was going to be retiring a large part of its fleet and the time was ripe for a more modern color scheme that would set it apart. A committee boiled it down to two choices – an updated variation of the white buses or something different. Different won.

“We use a lot more color than most agencies. The colors we on the committee chose were very bright and very Northwest,” said Metro’s Paint Shop Chief Jeff Sattler. “We paint the bottom half of the bus yellow, which is a safety choice. Then the top half is painted either teal, blue or green – more of an aesthetic choice to fit our community.”

Photo: green busThe new colors were introduced in 1996 with the acquisition of 95 Gillig buses. With that fleet – and with every purchase since – one third of the new buses were painted teal on top, one third blue above the yellow, and one third green. Sattler said the black stripe that divides the top from bottom is actually black reflective tape like you see on traffic signs.

Although the colors are consistent with each new bus purchase, the painting plan has to be adjusted for different models. Voris sends photos of new bus models to a freelance artist who adapts the Metro colors to that particular model. The artist has to take into consideration: roof protrusions, such as battery or air-conditioning housings; placement of the ad frames on the sides and back; window locations; and where the mechanical access panels are. Color break lines are then adjusted for that specific model.

One exemption is the George Benson Waterfront Streetcar Line, where all the vehicles are painted almost fully Metro green with a cream trim for a historic look.

Metro’s buses rarely need to be repainted once they arrive from the manufacturer. Sattler says the paint shop handles touch-ups needed to repair dings and dents, but doesn’t usually paint entire buses.

“Paints are so good now that we don’t routinely have to repaint buses during their lifetime,” said Sattler. “In few cases, when we rebuild a bus, we have repainted it to match the newer color scheme. For example, the 1996 Gilligs have their original paint and still have a few years left in them.”

Sattler said that the new paints are lead-free, chrome-free, and very environmentally safe. He says the Metro paint shop meets high environmental standards – evener higher than is necessary by law.

Just because the old white buses are disappearing doesn’t mean that all variation has gone away. At any given time of the year, approximately 30 of Metro’s buses are “wrapped” with giant full-bus advertising panels. Some of these – like recent ads for Apple iPods and the Woodland Park Zoo – can be quite colorful.

Sattler said the bus wraps are like big vinyl decals that you put in car windows or on walls. They don’t damage the base paint of the bus, and they are easily installed and removed. It takes about 20 hours to wrap an entire articulated bus.

Metro has had framed advertising on the exterior of its buses since 1973, and has had wrapped buses in its fleet since 1997. Many transit agencies throughout the county use wrapped buses as a way to supplement revenues.

When Metro does achieve that uniform color scheme sometime in 2007, it might not be too long-lived. Metro has proposed the creation of several Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) lines throughout King County. One of the keys to BRT service is to make the buses quickly identifiable so that passengers don’t have to wonder if they have the right route. What is considered to be the best way to achieve that instant visual recognition? A different paint color.

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