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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 during the past six-weeks, 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 this week 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.
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