This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
I’ve gotten so numb to huge ridership gains for transit in the past few months that it didn’t quite sink in that Sound Transit’s increase of 15% in March is a really big deal, so thanks to Martin for pointing it out. He’s right to be amazed at how ST has managed to keep the costs-per-boarding almost flat while it adds new, relatively empty reverse-commute trains.
Here’s a chart from the report (.pdf) that caught my eye:
It’s interesting that many of the biggest gains were on routes that don’t begin or end in Seattle: Lynwood-Bellevue, Issaquah-Northgate, Lakewood-SeaTac, etc. This says to me that some very car-centric communities have caught the transit bug, which is great.
Of course, many of the really, really popular routes, in absolute numbers, are the ones that go between Seattle, Lynwood, Bellevue and Redmond. You know, the kind of high-capacity, high-demand corridors that would be most economically served by, say, a choo-choo train.