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Rick Larsen (b. 1965)\u00a0has served\u00a0as the United States\u00a0representative\u00a0for Washington’s second congressional district since 2001. A democrat, Larsen is\u00a0the\u00a0ranking member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. In this November 2025 interview with HistoryLink’s Jennie Cecil Moore, Larsen discusses his\u00a0career\u00a0in government beginning with the Snohomish County Council and a position on the Community Transit board. Larsen discusses\u00a0his service on the Transportation Committee and Bus Caucus in Congress, developments in regional transit over the 25 years he has held the office, and\u00a0how he navigates\u00a0politics\u00a0to advocate\u00a0for bipartisan transit support.<\/p>\n
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Getting Started with Transit<\/p>\n
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Rick Larsen explains how he became involved on the Community Transit board as an elected official on the Snohomish County Council with experience as a commuter on Community Transit buses. <\/p>\n
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Rick Larsen:\u00a0I was elected to the Snohomish County Council in 1979 [1997] and then became a member of the Council in 1998, in January. And from that time on, we had the opportunity on the County Council to select people to be part of the Community Transit Board. So, I was on the Community Transit Board while I was on the County Council as well. And the Community Transit Board is made up of a couple of representatives of the county, the council and then cities throughout the Snohomish County. So, I was our representative, the Snohomish County representative on the board.<\/p>\n
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But before that, I worked in Seattle and lived in Everett, and I was a commuter on Community Transit, so I was a rare bird, on the county on the Community Transit Board at one point, because [I was] actually a five-and-a-half to six-year user of the system itself, and had a unique perspective on the on that, but it was a an interesting perspective, because we had to make a lot of a lot of tough choices in the time I was on there because of some statewide funding issues, and having that perspective as someone who used the system, maybe provided just one more perspective beyond being an elected official.<\/p>\n
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I will tell you that the first day I remember, the first day I used a commuter bus to get [to] downtown Seattle. I could not believe how relaxed I was when I went into work. I did not have to drive into Seattle from Everett. And I don’t even know if it was a rainy day or a sunny day, it didn’t matter. It was just it was just a massive relief being able to not have the stress of driving, with all those other folks who drive south into Seattle.<\/p>\n
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Reaching North Snohomish County<\/p>\n
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Larsen reflects on his efforts to expand Community Transit service to north Snohomish County despite funding cuts. <\/p>\n
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RL:\u00a0In 1991, it was on the commuter side\u2026 it was a pretty good experience, although I do recall when I was on the County Council working with some folks in the state legislature to increase the number of park and rides north of Everett, because the Community Transit was largely serving a population that was concentrated in South Snohomish County, or you know, Everett, Everett south. But Arlington, where I was born and raised, Stanwood, Darrington, other areas weren’t served as well. But part of that problem was the lack of Park and Rides in the north Puget Sound or North Snohomish County, in order to serve that commuter base as a “for instance.” So, one of the projects I worked on was working with state legislature to get some get a study done about \u2026where can we put these Park and Rides. And then later, when I was in Congress, [I] worked with Community Transit to get some funding for a few of these Park and Rides that I helped plan for when I was in on the County Council\u2026.We also had a huge funding problem because of a statewide initiative, and in one year, we had to \u2026 make a massive cut to the amount of service being provided to the people in the Public Transit Benefit Area, and that was really tough. But just the money wasn’t there. So, scaling back service when you’re trying to grow the service, it’s not something elected officials like to do, but it was really\u2026necessary.<\/p>\n
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Bipartisan Bus Caucus<\/p>\n
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Since October 2025, Rick Larsen has served as the co-chair of U.S. Bipartisan Congressional Bus Caucus with Rep. Darin LaHood (R-Illinois). The purpose of the Bus Caucus is to promote long-term federal investment in bus systems while also addressing technological challenges and opportunities facing the country’s many transit systems. <\/p>\n
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RL:\u00a0Well, I’m a co-chair of the Bus Caucus. And for those who track Congress, you will know there’s a caucus for everything. We have a lot of committees, but members of Congress aren’t on every committee, but they might be interested in an issue that their committee doesn’t deal with so they want to participate in that issue, and so they create these caucuses. Now I’m on the Transportation Committee, and in part, what we do is help fund transit. But as it turns out, I’m also wanting to be the co-chair of the Bus Caucus because I support public transit because of my experience at CT over time, and so that’s one way it has helped inform the work I do. It’s also helped me understand that not all transit agencies are the same. One thing I tell members of Congress who I’m trying to get\u2026 interested in transit, is to first understand how your local transit agency is governed. Is it part of the city? Is it a confederation model like Community Transit, where you have county people and city people who have a responsibility given to them by their own elected boards to do this? Just how are they organized? If you understand how they’re organized and governed, then you’ll understand the local politics of getting these projects on for transit, and it’ll make you a better member of Congress and better to serve. So, there’s a couple of lessons there for me as a member to try to provide the support to CT that it needs to continue to expand with the growth that’s taking place in in Snohomish County.<\/p>\n
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Larsen represents Washington’s Second Congressional District, which includes of Skagit, Whatcom, San Juan, and Island Counties as well as some communities in the I-5 corridor of Snohomish County. He describes his district’s constituents and their diverse transit needs.<\/p>\n
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RL:\u00a0My district isn’t a district that is a one conglomeration of people like\u2026 Seattle, or Portland or L.A., or what have you. It is all or parts of five separate counties, including Island County, which is made up of two islands, Whidbey and Camano\u2026. Camano is more connected to Snohomish County than it is to its partner island in Whidbey Island, but Island Transit serves those [people] and it’s the only rural transit agency in my district. The others are Whatcom and Skagit Transit and Community Transit and Everett Transit. And all of them are organized uniquely. All of them are serving a population that is done in a way that is for that area, not for any other area. And so, I think what the value of having these localized transit agencies is, [is] that they can be responsive to the population they’re trying to serve. I think that here in Snohomish County, with its growth and the fact that Everett has its own transit agency, that Community Transit uses a little bit different model for Arlington than it does for Lynnwood. But you’ve also seen over time Community Transit seek to expand its service by bringing in Bus Rapid Transit. That’s a big change from when I was on the board 25-plus years ago. But\u2026if you go to Whatcom, you don’t see Bus Rapid Transit. But you do see them organizing in Bellingham, especially very specific lines [that] are supposed to be designed\u2026to hit certain, we call them headways, like every 10 minutes, every 15 minutes, and be very specific about hitting those times so you have more consistent, more reliable service. And so, [we are] starting to see that take place in some other areas as well.<\/p>\n
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Transportation and Infrastructure Committee<\/p>\n
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The Transportation & Infrastructure Committee is the largest committee in the U.S. House of Representatives. It includes highways, transit, aviation, rail, water infrastructure, pipeline safety and the U.S. Coast Guard. <\/p>\n
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RL:\u00a0I’m the ranking Democrat on the Transportation Committee in Congress. And all that means is I’ve been around a long time. I’ve been I’ve been around long enough to be the top Democrat on the Committee and not leave the Committee. So, I get to do, get to see how other areas are doing transit, operating transit. And when you get to larger cities and older cities, transit also means rail.<\/p>\n
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And of course, we have Sound Transit here in the Pacific Northwest. And then Portland, there’s rail. But in older cities, you have older systems that are part of connecting people\u2026 as these cities grow out as well in order to provide these opportunities for people to get out of their cars every once in a while, if not all the time, and to do their shopping and go to work, go to entertainment venues, to do what they want to do. But \u2026it really is hard to generalize about transit across the United States because these systems– there’s a lot of similarities– but the localized conditions to build out transit systems are very local. They’re extremely local, and you have to rely on local decision makers to make those decisions and then support them. So, in Congress, what we try to do is like, I’m [not] going to tell you what to build, or how to build, but you need to know what you want to build and how you want to build it. And then, come ask for money\u2026. It doesn’t go the other way around because there’s a lot of other people who are ready to build out their transit systems and know what they want to do. And they’re likely to get funded first. And so, you end up seeing\u2026 a lot of different models of how people want to go about building on transit.<\/p>\n
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RL:\u00a0The [U.S. Congress Transportation and Infrastructure] Committee is one of the rare instances of bipartisanship right now in the U.S. House of Representatives. At the time of this recording that we’re doing [November 2025], we’re a committee that has passed bipartisan legislation on pipeline safety, bipartisan legislation to reauthorize and support the U.S. Coast Guard, bipartisan legislation to reform the Federal Emergency Management Agency in a way that strengthens it, doesn’t eliminate it, and working on a bipartisan bill to fund the next five years of roads, bridges, highways, transit and rail. And what I tell people about this Committee is that if you want to be on TV in the District of Columbia, there are committees for that. If you want to be on TV in your own district, the Transportation Committee is the Committee for that, because we will help find ways for you, member of Congress, to be successful and deliver for people in your district. And you can go home and talk about projects that are getting built or being repaired that will benefit the quality of life that people represent. And so that’s the general rule I’d say about working on this Committee.<\/p>\n
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When it comes to transit, I think that one of the challenges we face is that–and this gets into some of the politics of the country, unfortunately– is that the people who had been supportive of transit investment who were on the Republican side of the aisle have largely lost races to Democrats. And therefore, Republican supporters of transit in the U.S. House Representatives have started to sort of disappear. So, the challenge we have, and I don’t bring this up for the politics of it. I do bring it up because it creates a challenge of: How do you create bipartisan support for transit when the people who represent transit are concentrated in one party? And so, one of the challenges that it faces now in the 2025 timeframe is ensuring that those agencies, those transit agencies in rural areas (like in our own state, in Eastern Washington, we have Spokane or Benton, [or] Franklin counties have\u2026a great system as well). How do you get them involved in talking about transit to the people, to the members of Congress that they represent? Just as an example. And so, I think\u2026to keep that transit train going, if you will, it does require members of Congress to keep thinking about: How do you how do you continue to educate the ever-changing face of members of Congress on the value of transit in their districts? And that’s been one of the challenges that I’ve faced for the last several years.<\/p>\n
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Advocating for Transit<\/p>\n
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RL:\u00a0Well, the Bus Caucus came together because we wanted to find a bipartisan way to talk about transit, a bipartisan way to talk about the need for capital investment in transit. And what that means in English is: buying buses. So, it was what it means. And so, you find working with public transit agencies that are larger, maybe in urban areas like Seattle or a suburban area like a Snohomish County, where CT is, and then combine that with the transit agency in Peoria. And I bring up Peoria, Illinois, not just because if it plays in Peoria, [it] can play anywhere. But the representative from Peoria, Representative Darin LaHood, is the Republican co-chair of the Bus Caucus. And so\u2026having a bus caucus is a way to communicate the bipartisan nature of transit investments and the need to have those transit investments as we continue to reform and rewrite legislation that supports transit. So that’s where the where the Bus Caucus comes into play.<\/p>\n
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RL:\u00a0I think what’s been important to me about advocating for transit has been the ability to focus on a very simple premise: that transit helps people in your neighborhood move safely and efficiently to work, to play, to library, to shop. Therefore, transit fulfills a very important basic role to the quality of life of people. And if it gets beyond that, then we’re overthinking it. I think it needs\u2026to be, it needs to be a fairly simple lesson about how important transit is. So that’s what my focus has been on. And then also, then trying to communicate to others who maybe aren’t advocates of transit, that they may not be an advocate because they don’t use it, but if they just scratch the surface a little bit, they’re going to find people that they know that use it, or they\u2026know. It’s like maybe two degrees of separation, and [they will] find people that use it. So\u2026transit is a part of everyday life in most districts around the country, congressional districts around the country. And part of my job is to help transit users communicate that, as well as encourage members of Congress to go out and look for it and find it.<\/p>\n
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RL:\u00a0First, I don’t try to convince them that they should drive on a bus if they don’t want to. Right\u2026their lived experience or personal experience isn’t that. Because that’s not their issue. The issue that\u2026I was thinking about this question ahead of time, a little bit, because my dad used to complain, and he was the city council member in Arlington, Washington, and he used to complain about the empty Community Transit buses, like, right after community transit got started. Like: Why are we doing this? What is this all about? And\u2026 that’s sort of still some of the premise of people’s complaints. So, buses are empty. Well, buses are empty when you saw that bus, that doesn’t mean they’re empty, and it doesn’t mean that they\u2026didn’t just drop someone off, or they’re picking someone up later. And then over a day and over a week, collectively, there’s a lot of people getting on and off those buses. The fact that you didn’t see them does not mean that it doesn’t exist. In fact, then you can say\u2026here are the numbers of people traveling. And this is what it meant for cars not on the road, or what have you, as well. People do benefit.<\/p>\n
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You can\u2026do the math of the number of people on a bus any one time over a day. It would never do it at one time, but, like, over a day. And you can say, you can multiply that by the number of cars, that is, and so that, and then tell that person, the skeptical person, well, that number [of] cars isn’t there, those cars aren’t making your life miserable. Only one\u2026vehicle is. It’s the bus transit you don’t like. But I just saved you 35 cars not making your life miserable, just whatever it is, because I’m never expecting someone who’s really skeptical of transit to take my argument and say, \u201cYou’re right. I’m going go, I’m getting on a bus right now.” And so I don’t believe that’s going happen. If I can get them to back off, go to neutral, then that’s fine with me. There’s plenty of people who are for.<\/p>\n
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“Pushing the Envelope of Transit”<\/p>\n
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RL:\u00a0Actually, [I] think our transit systems here in the Northwest are pretty interesting and pushing the envelope of transit. Community Transit itself is one agency that is both changing the technology of the bus itself, in terms of moving from straight diesel, to diesel-electric, to battery-electric. Community Transit has introduced Bus Rapid Transit called BRT. That’s an innovation in transit because it means dedicated lanes. It means that every 15 minutes, or every 10 minutes, whatever the plan for the for that particular line is, you’re going to have certainty of a bus being there to pick you up and take you to the next spot. That’s been relatively new. In the region we have struggled\u2026in the past. Sound Transit has brought light rail now to Snohomish County. And that has given the Community Transit the ability to reconfigure its service\u2026footprint to both serve light rail as well as to serve other areas with more service that wasn’t there before.<\/p>\n
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Then, I think the other thing to think about is how we’ve tried to connect other agencies, other transit services, into Snohomish County: the 90x, which is the bus that runs from Skagit Transit station and Everett Transit station. So now you’re connecting Skagit to here, thinking of\u2026the Amtrak line that runs from Vancouver, British Columbia, into Seattle, and picking up people along the way and trying to connect service there. And then finally, I would say, with microtransit, Community Transit has introduced what they call microtransit. It’s rideshare transit, but in certain areas of the county. And it’s been relatively successful, which is great news. Microtransit is kind of the latest thing in transit, and we’ll see what the next thing is. But Community Transit seems to be on top of most of the trends in transit.<\/p>\n
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“The Issues Pick You”<\/p>\n
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Larsen reflects on the ways in which his experience with Community Transit helped him as a congressman. <\/p>\n
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RL:\u00a0People know that I was\u2026on the Community Transit Board at one time. And I’m really proud to have served on it and be part of a board that went through a very difficult time when we had to cut service, but [we] did it in a way where Community Transit could build back, which it did. Then, the second thing would be using that knowledge to continue to support the buildout of transit opportunities throughout my district. And the third is being on the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, using that basic knowledge to help out other members of Congress in their own districts, providing them advice, being a little bit of a tutor about how to go about helping their own transit agencies, based on my experience. It’s been\u2026 the one part of the job where it is a little bit more like a job. Being in Congress, I always tell people: “When you run for office, you get to pick the issues you run on. And when you serve, the issues pick you.”<\/p>\n
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That is, you just don’t get to say, “I don’t want to do that, because I didn’t talk about that in the campaign, so I don’t want to.” You don’t get that choice when once you’re elected, everything is your priority. And sometimes you don’t have the basic knowledge to even work on some things you end up working on. I’m very pleased I’ve got some basic knowledge to be able to work on transit issues throughout the country because the experience I had at CT.<\/p>\n
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