a regional rapid transit system, it was authorized to operate a regional bus system in 1972. The bus system was known as Metro Transit and began operations on January 1, 1973. Its operations subsumed the Seattle Transit System, formerly under the purview of the City of Seattle and the Metropolitan Transit Corporation, a private company serving suburban cities in King County. In the early 1970s, the private Metropolitan faced bankruptcy because of low ridership. King County voters authorized Metro to buy Metropolitan and operate the county's mass transit bus system. Metro Transit introduced its new services in September 1973, including a ride-free area in downtown and express routes on freeways (known as "Flyer" routes), and a unified numbering scheme in 1977 that replaced named routes. The Municipality of Metropolitan Seattle was overseen by a federated board of elected officials, composed of elected officials from cities throughout the region. Its representation structure was ruled unconstitutional in 1990 on the grounds of "one person, one vote" following a similar ruling in Board of Estimate of City of New York v. Morris. In 1992, after gaining approval by popular vote, the municipality's roles and authorities were assumed by the government of King County. The municipality's transit operations was a stand-alone department within the county until 1996, when it became a division of the newly created King County Department of Transportation. In August 2018, the county council approved legislation to separate Metro from the Department of Transportation, creating the King County Metro Transit Department effective January 1, 2019. After completion of the downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel project, attention was drawn again to developing a regional rail system. This interest led to the formation of the Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority (more commonly known as Sound Transit) which holds primary responsibility for planning and building high capacity transit in the counties of King, Pierce and Snohomish, in western Washington state. Today, King County Metro operates more than 200 routes, providing local and regional transit service, primarily within its jurisdictional boundaries. Besides its own transit operations, Metro operates several ST Express bus routes and the Central Link light rail line under a contract with Sound Transit and two streetcar routes under contract with Seattle Streetcar. Ride Free Area For almost 40 years, until 2012, most of downtown Seattle was designated as a zero-fare zone, an area in which all rides on Metro vehicles were free,