Transit Up Nationwide, Funding Here at a Stand-still

The Seattle Times ran a modified version of this New York Times article about transit use rising nationwide. The New York Times piece identifies rising gas prices as a primary reason for the rise in use.

The sudden jump in ridership comes after several years of steady, gradual growth. Americans took 10.3 billion trips on public transportation last year, up 2.1 percent from 2006.

Transit managers are predicting growth of 5 percent or more this year, the largest increase in at least a decade.

“If we are in a recession or economic downturn, we should be seeing a stagnation or decrease in ridership, but we are not,” said Daniel Grabauskas, general manager of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, which serves the Boston area. “Fuel prices are without question the single most important factor that is driving people to public transportation.”

Transit use rose the most in the West, where transit is traditionally used the least, which makes sense because a place like New York where more than half of commuters use transit has half as many people who don’t use transit compared to a place where nearly no one uses transit. In King County about 10% of commuters use transit, and in Seattle the number is about 17%.

The transit ridership gains here are impressive:

Sound Transit ridership grew 12.3 percent in 2007, according to the agency.

In 2007, nearly 14 million riders boarded Sounder commuter rail, ST Express buses and Tacoma Link light-rail trains, according to the agency.

The biggest ridership increase among Sound Transit’s three modes was on the Sounder commuter rail, with a 27.4 percent increase in 2007, according to the agency, the fourth-biggest commuter-rail ridership increase in the nation for 2007.

In Seattle, Metro ridership has grown 18 percent in the past three years, spokeswoman Linda Thielke said. She said that in the first three months this year, ridership was up 6 percent from the same time last year.

Sounder’s growth can be attributed the number of trains being run. Obviously, more trains carry more people, but a new schedule run also encourages more people to ride the other scheduled trains even if they never ride the new service. Just knowing there are more trains keeps people sure they won’t get trapped in the city without a train to take home.

Buses are getting more crowded, which has got to get painful on buses that don’t come often or were already crowded. I bet the number 7 bus is standing-room only on each rush-hour coach. The problem is that even though demand is high, funding for Metro, especially in the City, has not kept pace. The New York Times but points out a kind of catch-22 in the way we fund transit:

But meeting the greater demand for mass transit is proving difficult. The cost of fuel and power for public transportation is about three times that of four years ago, and the slowing economy means local sales tax receipts are down, so there is less money available for transit services. Higher steel prices are making planned expansions more expensive.

Typically, mass transit systems rely on fares to cover about a third of their costs, so they depend on sales taxes and other government funding. Few states use gas tax revenue for mass transit.

At least transit is a way for some people to save money. The states that use gas-tax money to pay for transit are likely really hurting.

The money quote is right at the end of the article:

“Nobody believed that people would actually give up their cars to ride public transportation,” said executive director Joseph Giulietti, executive director of the authority.

“But in the last year, and last several months in particular, we have seen exactly that.”

Imagine that.

I want to know: are any routes getting seriously over-crowded? There was a time when the 545 was always at crush load, but it’s lightened up a bit thanks to more runs from Sound Transit, and more Microsoft Connector buses.