Hey! Good news! More & more people are taking public transportation (most likely due to the soaring gas prices) these days! And TriMet has the numbers to prove it - they just had a record-breaking April:
“* More than two million trips were taken on MAX and buses each week, the first time TriMet has topped two million trips for weekly ridership.
* Nearly 69,000 more trips were taken weekly during April 2008, as compared to April 2007.
* 5,400 additional daily trips were taken on transit during the morning rush hour (7-9 a.m.), as compared to April 2007. This adds up to an 11.6 percent increase over April 2007.”
As ridership grows, let’s hope TriMet keeps up with the demand by providing more buses for high-trafficked routes & MAX trains running more frequently.
4 comments ↓
I hope Tri-Met increases the number of blue line trains heading out towards Gresham. It’s gotten so it’s almost constantly crowded in the early afternoon rush hour (between 3-5 pm).
“TriMet keeps up with the demand by providing more buses for high-trafficked routes ”
Unfortunately, TriMet has zero interest in providing more busses.
It’s in the Transit Investment Plan. 40 busses a year to replace 20 year old busses - that’s five years beyond when the busses should have been replaced. No new service; in fact if you read any of the last two years’ TIPs you can clearly see that TriMet has virtually eliminated every bus route expansion, except for the 76 going to Frequent Service and splitting the 78 from Washington Square to Lake Oswego as a new route distinct from the 76 (for which I’d likely see that this route would be a M-F rush hour route, with maybe hourly service during the day and maybe hourly service on Saturdays - which would be a service reduction.)
Just a quick note: the 12 has been full the last week on commute around 8-9 a.m. Now people need to be riding their bikes…
So, TriMet should be actively **discouraging** transit ridership?
It would seem to me that full busses means more demand for transit, that TriMet should work to meet. Full busses (and MAX trains) actually discourages transit, if you have to stand for a prolonged period of time on a moving vehicle.
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