Metro Transit is sick and in need a total overhaul if it is to take on the ever more serious role of supplying the city and surrounding metropolis with efficient transportation.

Not only do too many buses not go the way people need to go, but zooming fuel prices are putting the squeeze on the agency causing King County Executive Ron Sims to seek a 25-cent fare increase.

Just what squeezed drivers need to get them out the the car and onto buses?

First, too often the buses do not take people where they need to go. Main routes along thoroughfares are where buses run to downtown and back, but how do residents get to the main routes? Walk? Well, sure if it is a block or two, but what about a mile or two? The system works well if you live near a major bus route and you are going downtown. It works from marginally alright to abysmally bad if you live away from main routes.

Metro needs new rules on how routes and services are allocated. New service needs to be where population is soaring.

We do see the county executive's reason for wanting a fare increase since the price of diesel is creating a $14 million deficit this year.

But consider all those people, young and old, who do not get a pay increase in this year of inflation and recession. Prices are going up but pay rates are not.

A quarter increase may not seem a lot to many of us, but students and the olders people that often uses buses out of absolute need have to consider if they can pay the $1.75 fare.

Our economy is straining, our rents and housing costs are going upward nearly as fast as a barrel of oil, so we need to find ways to solve problems without creating a new underclass of citizens without.

We do not have the answer, but we need our leaders to keep working on some solutions or the prediction of some thinkers that the United States is heading toward Third World status may be more than idle rhetoric.

- Jack Mayne