Sound Transit released their 3rd Quarter Ridership Report today.
Year-to-date ridership on light rail is 5,237,792 passenger trips, or an average of 23,170 trips per week day.
Ridership continues to grow, but at a much slower pace than what Sound Transit has projected. And as ridership continues to slow during the winter months, Sound Transit will still probably miss their most recent annual projection of 26,000 trips per day.
At any rate, 23,170 trips is only about 0.17% of all daily person trips taken in the Puget Sound region.
More pressing is the on-time performance of light rail. Through the third quarter, light rail is late 21% of the time, which is slightly better than the 2nd quarter rate of 23%.
Sound Transit officials told voters in 1996 that Light Rail "will provide significantly greater reliability than all other types of public transportation in the region.” The reliability of light rail was one of Sound Transit's biggest selling points, especially over other modes like bus rapid transit. Typically, other transit modes have on-time performance of between 90-99 percent.
So $2.6 billion bought us light rail that only carries 0.17% of all trips and is late 21% of the time.
Come on. Can't we do better than this?