Sound Transit celebrates new ridership milestones, advances engineering for Redmond & Federal Way light rail extensions

Hap­py news to share this after­noon: Sound Tran­sit revealed today that demand for its express bus, com­muter rail, and light rail ser­vices is boom­ing, while also announc­ing that it has restored fund­ing for engi­neer­ing work on future light rail exten­sions to Fed­er­al Way and down­town Red­mond, where NPI is headquartered.

Sound Tran­sit, as most Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate read­ers prob­a­bly know, is the mul­ti-coun­ty region­al tran­sit author­i­ty that vot­ers cre­at­ed in 1996 to build a high capac­i­ty tran­sit net­work for the cities of Seat­tle, Taco­ma, Everett, Belle­vue, and their sub­urbs. ST’s ear­ly years were rocky, but today, it is a mod­el pub­lic agency, deliv­er­ing projects on time (or even ahead of sched­ule) and under budget.

Sound Tran­sit’s ser­vices just con­tin­ue to grow in pop­u­lar­i­ty (as we have always believed that they would.) The lat­est rid­er­ship fig­ures bear this out:

Sound Tran­sit rid­ers once again set all-time annu­al records in 2015 for board­ings on com­muter trains, bus­es and light rail in cen­tral Puget Sound. Sound Tran­sit had an esti­mat­ed 34.9 mil­lion total board­ings last year, a 6 per­cent increase over 2014. Aver­age week­day board­ings were 116,839 in 2015.

And this year, with three new light rail sta­tions open­ing (includ­ing two less than a month from now!) we will cer­tain­ly be see­ing anoth­er rid­er­ship increase.

“We con­tin­ue to set new records for rid­er­ship by pro­vid­ing fast, reli­able alter­na­tives to dri­ving,” said Sound Tran­sit Board Chair and King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine, tout­ing the fig­ures in a news release. “More peo­ple than ever in our region are choos­ing tran­sit to get to their destination.”

Here’s the break­down by mode:

Aver­age week­day boardings

• Sounder com­muter rail: 14,600 — a 15 per­cent increase from 2014
• Link light rail: 35,573 — an 8 per­cent increase from 2014
• ST Express region­al bus­es: 62,981 — a 3 per­cent increase from 2014

Annu­al boardings

• Sounder com­muter rail: 3.8 mil­lion, 13 per­cent increase from 2014
• Link light rail: 11.7 mil­lion, 7 per­cent increase from 2014
• ST Express region­al bus­es: 18.3 mil­lion, 4 per­cent increase from 2014

As Link con­tin­ues to expand north (to Lyn­nwood), south (to Fed­er­al Way), and east (to Red­mond), rid­er­ship will climb dra­mat­i­cal­ly. It won’t be much longer before light rail becomes the mode with the high­est over­all ridership.

Of course, there’s room for the Express bus net­work to grow as well. As the rail spine grows longer, Sound Tran­sit ought to be able to increase the fre­quen­cy and qual­i­ty of ser­vice to com­mu­ni­ties that are cur­rent­ly underserved.

Get­ting that rail spine built out as quick­ly as pos­si­ble is a top pri­or­i­ty for the Sound Tran­sit Board. That’s why, today, the Board vot­ed to autho­rize staff to spend the mon­ey to move for­ward with the design for Link exten­sions to Fed­er­al Way and down­town Red­mond. This work was sup­posed to be part of the 2008 Sound Tran­sit 2 pack­age, but it was put on hold after the Great Reces­sion wiped out a whop­ping $4.2 bil­lion from pro­ject­ed sales tax revenue.

The econ­o­my has improved, and sales tax rev­enue has rebound­ed some­what above what was fore­cast­ed. Con­se­quent­ly, Sound Tran­sit now has the resources to do this vital­ly impor­tant engi­neer­ing work. It’s very good news.

“Extend­ing light rail to Fed­er­al Way and down­town Red­mond has remained a top pri­or­i­ty for Sound Tran­sit,” said Con­stan­tine. “Restor­ing fund­ing for the next phase of project design brings us anoth­er step clos­er to con­nect­ing more peo­ple to our grow­ing region­al mass tran­sit system.”

Fund­ing still does­n’t exist to actu­al­ly build light rail to Fed­er­al Way and down­town Red­mond, but these projects are both a lock for inclu­sion in the forth­com­ing Sound Tran­sit 3 pack­age that the Board is expect­ed to send to vot­ers this year.

Tim Eyman, Wash­ing­ton’s infa­mous pur­vey­or of destruc­tive ini­tia­tives, is present­ly attempt­ing to qual­i­fy an ini­tia­tive to the bal­lot that would wipe out one of the fund­ing sources for Sound Tran­sit 3. This mea­sure, I‑1421, would also repeal state-lev­el fund­ing for Amtrak Cas­cades and freight mobil­i­ty projects.

NPI is already work­ing to orga­nize oppo­si­tion to Eyman’s I‑1421 so that we stand the best chance pos­si­ble of defeat­ing it should it qual­i­fy for the ballot.