Comments on: King County Ridership – Spring 2009

By: Lack Thereof

Lack Thereof — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 10:18:11 +0000

The fourty-late has gotten a lot more reliable now that it ends at the Mount Baker Transit Center.

I can actually trust it to get me to work on time now, and I can transfer to the Central Link at Mt. Baker instead of downtown, which is much more comfortable.

By: eddiew

eddiew — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 06:06:42 +0000

the west subarea (e.g., Seattle, Shoreline, and LFP) has 62 percent of Metro’s service hours and produces a bit more than one-third of the tax revenues. the higher farebox recovery does not make up for that overwhelming distribution. the suburbs subsidize Seattle riders.

By: wes kirkman

wes kirkman — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 20:48:09 +0000

Good point. Was wondering why the Cap hill routes (49, 43, 44, 10, 11, 12) are buried when experience tells me these routes are packed to the gills.

By: John

John — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 18:21:13 +0000

They yanked stops off the 48 years ago – it used to be far, far worse. The particular area you mention is full of transfer points and arterials, and I’m not sure which stop you would close – when Metro looked at it they left things the way they were southbound, and only closed the northbound stop between Madison and John.

No question BRT features (and more service!) would really help.

By: John

John — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 18:15:37 +0000

Amen! Now if only we can keep them.

By: Lloyd

Lloyd — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 03:28:05 +0000

It’d be nice to do some wire infill and make the south half of the 48 electric “when” we order another 400 electric buses.

By: Warren on Beacon

Warren on Beacon — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 23:41:26 +0000

Don’t forget this is SPRING 09 data. The 48 and 174 routes has been shortened in Fall 09.

By: ericn

ericn — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 22:34:22 +0000

15th is scheduled to be repaved in 2011.

By: alexjonlin

alexjonlin — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 21:27:29 +0000

That’d be great if they split it up that way in the next couple years, so that there are even closer headways between U District and UW Station. It would actually be a little less convenient for me, but I’m okay with sacrificing my one-seat ride for reliability. We were just thinking that with just a little bit of more trolley wire, they could make the 48S (maybe the 47) become a trolley, and turn around at 50th like the 70.
The other thing that I think would actually significantly speed up the bus is if they repave 15th. 15th is ridiculously potholed, and the bus actually slows down quite a bit most times I’m on it for the segment along 15th, while it’s bumping up and down like crazy.

By: Chris Stefan

Chris Stefan — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 21:07:17 +0000

The 48 needs to be made into a RapidRide route.

By: Chris Stefan

Chris Stefan — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 20:49:21 +0000

This map can give some idea of ridership per mile.
http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/docs/Map312000_Pop_Emp_Dens_w_Ridership.pdf

By: Mike Orr

Mike Orr — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 20:12:48 +0000

Ridership per day is a good measure because it’s understandable to laypeople. Whereas people are not sure what ridership per revenue hour neabs or whether it’s a fair statistic. But I would also put the peak-only routes on a separate list. It was a policy decision to have peak only routes, and they partly account for why peak-hour fares are higher. So we should judge the peak-hour routes as a whole and against each other, but not against the all-day routes.

There seem to be two kinds of peak routes: those that make up for the slowness of local routes during the highest congestion periods (mainly in Seattle), and those where no all-day route exist (Eastside and south King County). The chart skews these a bit because the 7-express is performing the same function as the Aurora Village expresses, but it gets lumped with the 7 while the others have distinct numbers. Those again are distinct from the peak-only Kent, Phantom Lake, and Sammamish routes that have no local service. The argument for these is that those people would drive to work if there weren’t peak buses, but they don’t ride the bus enough other times to offer all-day service.

For the owl routes, I’d say just compare all 2-5am service on a separate list.

By: Chris Stefan

Chris Stefan — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 19:57:39 +0000

I think in one of the debates over 20/40/40 a while back someone actually dug into the tax and farebox collection numbers for each of the Metro sub-areas. If I recall correctly there ends up being a slight subsidy from the suburbs to the city. Though that conclusion is arguable due to the way routes that cross sub-area boundaries are allocated. For example I believe the cost of the 255 is allocated 50/50 to the West and East sub-areas.

On a strict service hour vs. tax collection basis the West sub-area receives far more service hours per dollar of taxes collected than either the East or South sub-area.

Now it wasn’t urban Seattle that decided it was a good idea to run empty buses in the suburban and rural areas of the county, but a suburban dominated county council back in the ’90s. This is why we have 20/40/40 so new service hours go disproportionately to the East and South sub-areas to make up for the West sub-area getting the lions share of the service hours.

Now the exact politics of Metro taking over transit back in the early 70′s are lost to me but I believe the poor financial condition of both the city owned Seattle Transit System and the privately owned Metropolitan Transit Corporation had much to do with it.

By: ST Guy

ST Guy — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 13:18:55 +0000

Hey, there’s a reason we chose the route we did for ULink!

By: Bernie

Bernie — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 08:28:44 +0000

Yes, right on both counts. Seattle subsidizes suburban transit and suburbanites think it’s the other way around. What drives the suburbanites view is that most suburban transit routes don’t make sense and exist only because Urban Seattle decided it was a good idea to become a county wide transit agency. The empty eastside buses are a result of the “vision” of Seattle transit to expand county wide.

By: Jonathan Dubman

Jonathan Dubman — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 08:20:33 +0000

If the 48 were split in the U District, the south half would turn around at 45th St. (around the future light rail station) and the north half would turn around at the triangle (UW light rail station.) Thus only those whose trip straddles the U District and crosses the ship canal would have to transfer.

If that were done I wonder how the ridership would compare for the two halves. My guess is it would split sort of evenly.

This would roughly halve the average headways in the U District and increase schedule reliability for the “Forty Late.”

The 48 will also cross the Roosevelt station when that is built, and of course it serves the Mount Baker station today.

Metro already “cleaned up” the stops around Montlake which are shared between the 43 and 48. I believe they are getting to the entire line over time but I don’t know the schedule for that.

By: alexjonlin

alexjonlin — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 07:25:45 +0000

Cool document. Sucks that Seattle ends up subsidizing the suburbs’ transit service… Lots of suburbanites seem to think it’s the other way around!

By: alexjonlin

alexjonlin — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 07:01:01 +0000

I totally agree about the 48. I stopped taking it to school every morning because (if I make it in time) it gets so packed that people are sitting in front of the yellow line, and it’s so crowded behind the yellow line that they’re probably the most comfortable people on the bus. It’s a 40-footer, and despite the fact that at least a dozen of us have called Metro to ask them to put an artic on the run (there are artics on the runs before and after), but it has probably 70+ people on it most mornings… Now I take the 64, just get off at the last stop at Cherry Hill and run the six blocks to Garfield.
However, this overcrowdedness isn’t limited to those runs; any time during peak that I have ridden it, it is very packed. My other pet peeve with it is stop spacing. There are periods where it stops literally every block (around Madison, it stops just north of John, just south of John, just south of Madison, just south of Olive, and just south of Pine). They need to clean up that route, eliminating stops, adding the “BRT” features that you mentioned, and possibly splitting it at the U District.

By: Andreas

Andreas — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 05:34:51 +0000

Yeah, back in 2007 the 44 got ~25% more riders per mile than the 48.

I also wonder, since these numbers are from Spring 2009, does it happen to include UW’s Spring break? That could probably skew the numbers down a little bit for the 44 (though the 48 also gets a lot of student riders).

By: shabadoo

shabadoo — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 05:28:09 +0000

Keep in mind that these are total ridership numbers, and since each owl route only runs twice a night, that’s (at worst) ten riders per run… which is light, but not *that* light.