Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Here's our future: Sound Transit ridership a 1/3 less than promised.

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Locally, we are suffering from the attempts of the local Downtown Mafia to waste billions of dollars to bring a worthless, outmoded, unwanted transportation system into Vancouver that THEY won't have to pay for, also known as light rail.

Now, here's what we have to expect.

They will lie about the costs.

They will lie about the ridership.

And, of course, THEY won't be paying for it; WE will.

The most recent case in point? Sound Transit.

Billions have been wasted. Billions more WILL be wasted.

And the ridership figures promised to "justify" this horrific waste?

Not even close.

Light rail misses 2009 ridership target by wide margin

According to Sound Transit’s ridership figures from its first six months of operation, the initial light rail segment between downtown Seattle and the airport carried an average of 14,806 trips per weekday.

The following table summarizes the average number of weekday trips by month since the line opened in July.


Average trips per weekday, 2009

Month

July

13,769

Aug

14,931

Sept

14,905

Oct

16,192

Nov

14,399

Dec

14,639


Six Month Average

14,806

But Sound Transit has projected ridership would be much higher. With the opening of the airport segment in December, Sound Transit officials promised light rail would carry an average of 21,000 riders per weekday. Yet average ridership by the end of the year (December) was only 14,639 trips per weekday. That is 31.3 percent less than what Sound Transit officials said it would be.

Even if you only count the average weekday ridership since the airport segment opened on December 19th (eight days) it still only carried 16,809 trips per weekday, which is 20 percent less than what Sound Transit officials promised.

Either way, Sound Transit officials failed to deliver their promised ridership projections for 2009, and not by just a little but by a wide margin (20-30%). Officials will probably point to the economy as the reason for chewing into their higher estimate. But the region has been in a recession for about two years and as you can see from this press release in July, Sound Transit still promised 21,000 trips as recently as five months ago!

Here is the full ridership report obtained by the Seattle Times.

This is OUR future.

Remember, folks, there is absolutely no need to replace the I-5 bridge, period. EXCEPT.... to use it as a way to bring loot rail into Clark County.

So, there you have it. This is our future... a future of lies and waste, because, well, after all, our State Supreme Court has already ruled that it's perfectly OK for state and local offices to lie to get us to vote "yes" and then change everything but keep the money.

The jacking of our gas tax with the subsequent 40% reduction in projects... AFTER it passed... the 21 miles of loot rail in King County that was supposed to cost $2.2 billion... but now is 14 miles at a cost of over $4 billion... with billions left to spend.

This is how our government does business.

Makes me feel proud to be an American.
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2 comments:

Ben Schiendelman said...

Now wait a minute.

Seattle Transit Blog and others posted the actual ridership data.

Sound Transit projected 21,000 riders per day after Airport Link opened. They didn't say that would be an average for December, they said that was the line ridership should cross at the end of the year. Averaging in the time before Airport Link opened on December 19th gives you a number that doesn't represent the claim. Weekdays after the 19th saw average ridership of over 16,000, and some days had 18,500-19,000 late in the year.

The 21,000 number also assumed Metro wouldn't keep running the 194 express bus after Airport Link opened. That bus has been carrying over 4,000 riders a day, but Metro committed to shutting it down (they need the service hours elsewhere) when Link opened. They delayed that until February, along with other service changes they planned with Sound Transit years ago, when these projections were made.

With those expected changes in place, it's clear ridership would be exceeding projections.

The fact is, the only way you can make claims like this about ridership is to misrepresent Sound Transit's projection and misrepresent the ridership numbers.

8:14 AM
K.J. Hinton said...

Thanks for stopping by, Ben.

Please feel free to correct me in the following:

Sound Transit projected a daily ridership of 21,000. Whatever it assumed; whatever goat's entrails were consulted to arrive at that number, that is what Sound Transit projected.

The average ridership to date has missed that target by a third.

Sound Transit initially was to be 21 miles long at a cost of $2.2 billion (the system voters approved) but ultimately, was 14 miles long (to begin with) and cost $4 billion plus, all without voter approval beyond the first $2.2 billion.

So what we have here is this:

ST tells us that the ridership will be 21,000 (it isn't)

ST tells us it would cost $2.2 Billion (It didn't)

And this same number of passengers could easily be moved, for much less in costs, by buses.

At the end of the day, your explanation notwithstanding, ST provided a projection... a projection they've never exceeded, and by your own admission, only approached that on "some days."

The powers that be down here want to replace a bridge that doesn't need replacing and they want to extend light rail about 5 feet into Clark County at the cost of $4 billion (Before the massive overruns that will easily double the costs; after all, the Supreme Court told us it was perfectly OK for ST to lie about things like lengths and costs; there is no doubt we're being lied to down here now.) to move no more people than are being moved now on buses.

Unfortunately, what I said stands. For whatever the reason, ST made bogus ridership projections that they've failed to come close to even approaching, and in spending billions of dollars, it's fairly clear that even if they had managed to keep their word for once, it still wouldn't be close to worth the investment... precisely like the system down here they envision and are ramming down our throats without even bothering to ask.

In fact, ST ridership numbers seem to be a lot like Obama's bogus "jobs created or saved" figure that will cost us a trillion or more before it's done.

9:36 AM

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