Riders

From Oregonlive.com, "TriMet ridership slumps, but new Green Line provides a boost"

Ridership on TriMet trains and buses continued to slide in October, as the agency blamed the recession and high unemployment for several months of lower demand for mass transit.

Riders took 8.8 million trips on TriMet buses, MAX light rail and WES commuter rail in October, down 4.8 percent from the same month in 2008.

Rush hour ridership had the sharpest decline in October, compared with a year ago. TriMet had an average 328,300 trips on weekdays, a decline of 3.7 percent. But rush hour trips averaged 104,800 a day, down 7.1 percent. Weekend ridership dropped less than 1 percent.

The one bright spot in the October ridership figures: MAX ridership grew 9.2 percent. But that growth was due entirely to the new MAX Green Line, which started service between Portland State University and Clackamas Town Center Sept. 12.

The MAX system had 121,000 average weekday trips, an increase of 8.7 percent from a year ago. The Green Line accounted for 17,800 of those trips, or about 15 percent of the total.

Weekend MAX ridership grew by 11 percent overall. The Green Line accounted for about 15 percent of weekend rides as well.

WES commuter rail, which runs only between Beaverton and Wilsonville during weekday rush hour, had an average 1,190 trips a day in October. It has had about 1,130 to 1,200 a day since in opened in February.

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From blog.oregonlive.com, "Blame it on the bus -- TriMet ridership decreasing for many reasons"

The Oregonian reported today that TriMet's ridership numbers are sliding ("TriMet ridership level continues to drop," Nov. 12).

The only interpretation the paper supplied for why ridership has been dropping off were suppositions of TriMet's -- namely the state of the economy and the unemployment rate in the Portland Metro region. The paper failed to mention one key factor which I believe contributes to this decline: TriMet has slashed bus service in recent months and is continuing to do so. And on Nov. 10, TriMet announced that it is increasing headway on some 20 bus lines, further degrading service.

As an anecdote, my bus was eliminated altogether a couple of months back, and the only option left to me takes twice as long and requires a transfer. So I've stopped riding the bus altogether. Obviously there are larger forces at play, such as TriMet's unfortunate subsidy of Colorado Railcar Manufacturing and its ill-advised purchasing of fuel futures at the height of the market last year. But to simply report the numbers and allow TriMet to blame it all on the economy and joblessness denies that the agency is at all culpable for the dilemma in which it finds itself.

HENEFER MORGAN