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Metro ridership hit record in 2006
Metro’s ridership tends to be highest in the month of October in the middle of the week during the peak of the afternoon commute. So, if you were on a Metro route at 5:20 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2006, then you probably know first-hand that more people are riding the bus. Historically, Metro’s highest ridership tends to follow the school year – more riders in the spring and fall, and fewer during the summer and holidays. And, there is almost always a spike at the end of September when the University of Washington starts the fall quarter, because about 10 percent of all Metro boardings are paid for with a U-PASS. In 2006, people’s pocket books and wallets also played a big role in determining their mode of travel. “We saw about a 4.3 percent real increase in ridership throughout the year in 2006 compared to 2005,” said Metro General Manager Kevin Desmond. “The combination of more jobs and higher gas prices are probably the two biggest reasons we saw more people riding the bus, but improved transit service was also a factor.” The new ridership record is based just on numbers from Metro bus routes, and does not include more than an additional 3.2 million passenger trips via vanpools and transportation services for people with disabilities. Metro saw increases in vanpool participation by 10 percent in 2006, while ridership on Access paratransit service for people with disabilities was up by 2.5 percent. The previous high-ridership mark for Metro was set in 2000, during another period of strong job growth in King County. Passenger boardings declined slightly after that, but have been generally rising over the past 18 to 20 months. It appears that ridership in 2006 will beat the 2000 record by more than a million boardings.
During 2006, Metro staff did not have a lot of new service hours to work with. So, they focused on restructuring service to make it more convenient for passengers and more productive to operate. They saw good results after revamped service went into affect in South King County in September. There were approximately 1,200 more boardings a day on routes 150, 152, and 915 after they were restructured and Route 180 debuted. Desmond said that the impacts of an area-wide route restructuring can take several years to play out. In 2004, Metro revamped service throughout the Ambaum-Delridge corridor in southwest Seattle. Ridership jumped right after the changes, and continues to gain every year since then. “Even if you see some initial loss of passengers because some of the changes are less convenient or reduce service for some riders, eventually overall ridership grows because people who were driving find the revised service to be more convenient,” said Desmond. Victor Obeso, Metro’s manager of Service Development, said one of the biggest challenges facing transit planners is how to keep the buses full enough to justify operational costs, without overloading them to the point when passengers don’t want to ride a continually overcrowded bus. “We do monitor each route and each trip carefully,” said Obeso. “We have a goal for the commuter routes to average at least 70 percent capacity over three hours, but recognize some specific trips will be much fuller than that.” The Service Development staff keeps track of passenger loads on the different routes through automated boarding counts, driver reports, and actually going out into the field and watching boardings at busy bus stops and transit centers. The most precise method of counting ridership involves the use of Automated Passenger Counters (APC) that are on about 15 percent of Metro buses at any given time. Most of these are floor mats that rest on the steps inside each door of the bus, and count the number of times people board and deboard. The APC-equipped coaches are rotated throughout Metro’s system, so that each route and each individual trip on that route is counted several times a year. |
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