Metro Transit representatives took a look into the future as they detailed their long-range transportation plans in southwest King County on Tuesday.

Members of the Greater Federal Way Chamber of Commerce attended the roundtable. Their primary interests were transportation within and to Federal Way as the city continues to grow.

“This is going to be the playbook by which Metro grows its system,” Metro strategic partnership advisor Kim Beklund said. “For cities like yours that are constantly in change, it’s so critical that we hear from you and that we’re designing the system in a way that is gonna accommodate what your requirements are.”

The plan is focused on the potential plans for Metro transit in the year 2040. They have analyzed how prioritizing three different types of services will impact cities in the region, including frequent, express and local.

Each plan still contains elements of the other two, but at a reduced service percentage.

“For Federal Way, you’re in a really interesting geographic position,” Beklund said. “You have a lot of trips coming into and out of your area. We think there is great opportunity here, particularly on the express side, to really move people more effectively and still provide the all-day service that people are requiring.”

The express priority plan focuses on getting buses longer distances in less time by keeping the amount of stops on a route lower. Buses would run every 15-30 minutes for 15 hours a day.

The Federal Way Transit Center and Twin Lakes park and ride both provide the types of locations the express plan looks to serve as many of the users of public transportation drive to these locations first before taking the bus. The drawback is that there are less stops in proximity to those who may be looking to walk or ride a bike to a nearby bus stop.

Based on the projections, this plan would serve more residents of Federal Way during peak hours — 6-9 a.m. — than the other two would. During the midday, however, the express plan would serve the least amount of residents.

The local priority plan is used to serve harder to reach areas to improve proximity to transit for residents. This plan utilizes half-mile route spacing in order to provide many stops along the way.

Alternative routes are also already included in this plan for hard-to-serve areas. One area that was mentioned as underserved by both Deputy Mayor Jeanne Burbidge and Coucilwoman Susan Honda was the Dumas Bay Centre.

The area around the Dumas Bay Centre is left out of regular route plans due to presumably low use by residents.

“If we did put service out there, we would then evaluate it,” Metro transportation planner Stephen Hunt said. “Either it would continue to perform well and we’d be happy with it or it would do poorly and cause us to re-think is this investment worth the return. So that’s what’s pushing us to thinking about alternative services. How can we make that connection, but not at high costs?”

Buses would run much less frequently with a local focus, which limits their usefulness. They would likely run only every 30 minutes at best for 18 hours a day.

The frequent plan is the opposite with buses running every 10-15 minutes for 20 hours a day. It would provide the highest overall ridership in the area and lead to the most jobs within 30 minutes. Stops would be spaced one mile apart on these routes.

One of the issues that continued to arise at the meeting was the current lack of east-west transit options between Federal Way and its neighboring cities.

“There are a lot of students in Federal Way who we want to go to Highline of course, but go to Green River,” said Bob Roegner, Government Affairs Committee chair. “From my days in Auburn, east-west transportation was literally non-existent. That caught my attention, in terms of serving the needs of bringing people into Federal Way and the connection.”

“Long-range, Federal Way isn’t necessarily interested in pumping people out north,” Rebecca Martin, CEO of the Greater Federal Way Chamber of Commerce said. “We want to move them in Federal Way to the jobs. How many jobs can you get to in 30 minutes? What does that mean if we’re connecting east-west? That is one of the issues we’re having in terms of the business community, is getting our own people to our jobs here.”

Metro’s representatives did say that there were east-west connections in all of the plans. They have also recently begun to focus on transit to and from colleges and universities as students are often users of public transportation.

The final plan will likely be a hybrid of all of the plans, according to Beklund.

Metro is currently in the alternatives phase of their four-part timeline. It is in the second phase and is scheduled to run through the end of the month. They are shaping their final plan based on feedback from community members and stakeholders at this time and will continue to do so throughout the rest of the timeline.

The preliminary plan phase is scheduled to last from September through December. The final plan phase is scheduled to last from January 2016 through May 2016.