token from old seattle transit system

King County Exec Dow Constantine announce on Friday that a County Council “supermajority” has approved a $20 car tab surcharge.

The money will forestall vast Metro Transit cuts (up to 17 percent of all bus runs in the county, including some very important routes) that had been threatened for next year, due to the collapse of sales tax revenues.

However, as Friday birthday boy Sir Mix-A-Lot would say, there’s always a big “but.”

In this case, routes and schedules would continue to be “rightsized;” exurban sections of the county might see scheduled buses replaced by commuter vanpools and such. This also scraps the previous “40/40/20” policy, in which most new bus service was assigned to east and south King County instead of Seattle and Shoreline.

And, apparently at the insistence of County Council Republicans, the downtown Seattle “Ride Free Area” will be dumped starting October 2012.

It costs a mere $2 million a year to provide free bus rides within the downtown core and parts of Belltown and the International District, prior to 7 p.m. every day.

The Downtown Seattle Association and the various downtown “civic improvement districts” could pick up that slack, with relative ease.

Or they, and/or the city and the county, could fund a frequent, free loop route along First and Third Avenues.

But will they?