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More commuters are passing the pumps and going Metro

In recent months, ongoing congestion coupled with volatile gas prices have convinced more and more commuters that Metro is a better way to beat the traffic.

According to new transit ridership figures and other key Metro Transit tracking data, the demand for transit services and customer information is up dramatically across the board and is evident in virtually every Metro line of business.

“While we have known for many months that job growth has been driving up demand for Metro Transit services, new preliminary data show weekday ridership jumped about 7 percent - or an estimated 20,000 daily trips – in September compared to the same period a year ago,” said Metro Transit General Manager Kevin Desmond.

Overall Metro ridership for the third quarter of 2005 was up about 3.5 percent compared to a year ago. While this data is still considered preliminary, it indicates higher gas prices have also been fueling demand.

In addition to more passengers on its buses, Metro is also seeing increases in the following areas:

Vanpools/Carpools
October was a banner month for Metro's vanpool program. In the past four weeks, 51 new vanpools were formed – Metro Rideshare's biggest month ever for vanpool creation. It will also mean a new high for the number of vanpools on the road in King County, with approximately 720 individual vanpools. The previous milestone was 712 vanpools in January 2000.

RideshareOnline.com has experienced an unprecedented 60 percent one-month increase in customers seeking ridematch services compared to a year ago – up from 7,500 to 12,600 registered customers compared to the same time last year.

Park-and-ride use
Growth in park-and-ride use has been equally dramatic. Metro estimates an additional 1,175 vehicles per day used its park-and-ride lots during the third quarter of this year compared to the third quarter of 2004. This is the highest third-quarter increase in use in the past 15 years, with some park-and-rides in the county’s busiest travel corridors experiencing double-digit percentage increases.

More people are using park-and-rides in response to major effort by Metro to increase the numbers of spaces countywide. In the past five years, Metro has increased park-and-ride capacity by 17 percent at both its permanent and leased lots with more than 3,000 new spaces. Metro now has more than 20,000 spaces available at 123 permanent and leased lots – and the number will increase next February when the 1,000-space Issaquah Highlands Park-and-Ride garage opens north of Interstate 90.

Metro information services
Metro also reports a significant spike in the number of people looking for information about transit services and programs. The transit agency’s on-line Trip Planner has been an extremely popular resource. With more than 1,300 buses traveling on 211 routes during peak commute times, Trip Planner, is helping thousands of customers find bus schedules, bus stops, route maps, door-to-door directions and virtually everything they need to know about how to ride Metro. Third-quarter visits to Metro Online numbered more than 1.5 million, with Metro's Trip Planner providing 2 million itineraries to customers. Both figures reflect a continuing increase in usage.

Also, a Metro commute-planning program aimed at providing downtown Seattle employees with transit service information related to the tunnel closure has been hugely successful. More than 1,000 new and existing passengers taking advantage of the service.

The “Plan Your Commute” sessions have been so popular that Metro has decided to continue them as weekly sessions offering personalized timetables and other commute planning tools through 2006. These ongoing sessions will be held every Wednesday from 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. at the Transportation Connection Office, Rainier Square, 4th Avenue and University Street, Seattle.

Flexcar
Metro’s partnership with Flexcar also continues to expand. There are now more than 15,000 approved members in the Seattle area signed up to use Flexcar. There are more than 145 vehicles in the Flexcar fleet, with more being added all the time. The program recently expanded to include the communities of White Center, Renton and the Rainier Valley.

Desmond said when taken together, these individual indicators show more and more people are actively seeking transit alternatives - demand Metro and its partners would like to see grow even further.

With that in mind, Metro is launching a new ad campaign to remind motorists that the alternatives to driving alone have never been better. The month-long ad campaign will remind commuters there are a number of ways to free themselves from paying for gas and to leave their cars at home.

We drive a lot. The 2.7 million people in the central Puget Sound region drive more than 65 million vehicle miles every day. Today, the Seattle area ranks 15th in the country in terms of annual cost of congestion and annual delay. (Texas Transportation Institute, 2004).

The Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) released its 2004 Urban Mobility Study, a review of the conditions, costs, delays, and wasted fuel associated with traffic congestion. The much-anticipated study ranks the country's top 85 urban areas. Some of the startling facts in this year's report include:

3.5 billion hours per year are wasted in the 85 biggest cities due to congestion
46 hours per year are spent in traffic congestion by the average urban traveler up from 16 hours in 1982
Rush hour congestion rose to 67 percent of urban highways and arteries, up from 30 in 1982
67 percent of peak travel is congested on 58% of the roadways for an average total of 7.1 hours per day
62 of the 85 areas studied have at least the same or worse congestion
5.7 billion gallons of fuel is wasted due to congestion
Congestion costs $63.2 billion, up from $14.2 billion in 1982
Congestion affects more of the trips, more of the roads, throughout more of the day than previous years
Congestion has grown in areas of every size

Traffic is frustrating and expensive -- Sitting in traffic is not only frustrating for employees, it also impacts the bottom line of your company. It hurts employees' productivity and job satisfaction.

A wise investment -- Commuting benefits, options and assistance are a wise investment in today's competitive, congested environment. Use the information, tools and contacts here to develop and implement an effective employee transportation program.

King County Department of Transportation
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Updated: June 07, 2006

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