<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=192888919167017&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">
Thursday, March 28, 2024
March 28, 2024

Linkedin Pinterest

Transit ridership continues to grow in central Seattle, while solo car commutes decline

By Mike Lindblom, The Seattle Times
Published: February 14, 2018, 10:59am

Seattle — As public transit stagnates in most U.S. cities, central Seattle continued its rapid growth by adding roughly 10,000 morning transit commuters last year, new local data show.

The proportion of commuters who arrive in the morning by train, bus, streetcar or walking onto ferries has reached 48.4 percent, or by 126,808 people. Daily ridership exceeds 250,000 when midday, swing shift and afternoon commutes are added.

The 2017 data are the first to fully account for new light-rail stations that opened during 2016 at the University of Washington, Capitol Hill and Angle Lake in SeaTac. Those stops doubled overall train ridership, while bus use stayed the same or grew.

Figures were released Wednesday by the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) and Commute Seattle.

The other big change is bus frequency, funded mainly by a $60 car-tab fee and 0.1 percent sales-tax Seattle voters approved in 2014. Those taxes now supply roughly one-third of all runs for three RapidRide lines and frequent route 40 in Ballard-Fremont, said Andrew Glass Hastings, SDOT transit and mobility director.

“The performance has just gotten better every year,” said Jonathan Hopkins, executive director of Commute Seattle, a nonprofit funded by employers and transportation agencies.

The survey includes downtown plus its neighboring areas cornered by Uptown, Pioneer Square, the Chinatown International District and Capitol Hill.

The most dramatic shift comes from walking, as people move into housing towers close-in, said Hopkins. Some 20,174 people now walk to central-city jobs, a 69 percent increase compared to 2010.

With growth comes some problems.

King County Metro Transit buses that have sufficient room up north tend to overflow the last couple of miles after the Ship Canal, as they pass denser housing.

The RapidRide E Line on Aurora Avenue North carries nearly 18,000 riders a day, and often passes up people at southern stops. Seats were available for RapidRide C riders at West Seattle Junction a year ago, but now peak customers there are standing, as buses sometimes pass neighbors along Avalon Way Southwest.

“The reality right now is, transit faces a capacity constraint, and we can’t invest in it fast enough,” Glass Hastings said.

Bill Bryant, service development director for Metro, said the agency will acquire 11 more RapidRide buses this fall to add frequency, along with routine service boosts in March and September.

“We’ve really been trying to rise to the challenge of meeting that explosive demand, particularly in South Lake Union,” said Bryant.

Car travel isn’t improving, as drivers on gridlocked Mercer Street can attest. The state in April will try ramp-metering signals for cars merging into Interstate 5, which should aid freeway flow but might aggravate Mercer’s intersections.

The figures show solo driving accounts for only a 25.4 percent share, down from 35.2 percent in 2010. Last year that category decreased by 7,211 morning drives — the only kind of trips that shrank. These might be shifting to Uber and Lyft rides, or to improvised carpool apps like Scoop. Many people who would otherwise drive are choosing downtown apartments.

Hopkins suspects that any slippage in car commutes is being filled by more deliveries, ride-hailing services and tourists, who he said made 39 million visits to Seattle in 2017.

Seattle runs the risk of its downtown mobility helping mainly well-to-do people, as rents exceed $2,000 in the central city, and houses exceed $700,000 citywide on average.

The city’s answer to “the suburbanization of poverty,” says Glass Hastings, is to improve affordable-housing supply through zoning and density changes, while putting more transit in more neighborhoods.

Loading...