Record numbers of people are piling onto buses in Snohomish County.
“We really started to see things spike last August and September,” said Tom Pearce, a spokesman for Community Transit. “They’ve just been continually climbing and setting new records.”
Echoing the boom, Everett Transit, a separate transit agency that serves Everett, has set a new monthly rider record for two straight months, and expects this year to break an annual rider record set in 2005.
Sound Transit’s six Snohomish County commuter-bus routes also continue to attract more riders, especially on the three routes that cruise I-5.
“Gas prices clearly are influencing the behavior of commuters,” said Geoff Patrick, a spokesman for Sound Transit.
Sound Transit has six commuter bus routes that bring 6,000 Snohomish County workers per day to and from jobs in Seattle and King County’s east side. The number of riders has climbed since service started in the late 1990s, Patrick said.
“The overall trend is clearly upward,” Patrick said, pointing to a second phase of transit projects the agency hopes to bring to voters in 2007. “It’s clear that the public is recognizing that transit has a role in the future.”
Everett Transit is riding a wave of popularity that started three years ago when it took over routes that Community Transit dropped along the busy Highway 99 corridor.
In 2005, Everett Transit buses carried 1.97 million people, a record that the agency expects to easily break this year, said Tom Hingson, Everett Transit’s transportation services director.
Community Transit is also packing its buses, Pearce said.
“We’re up about 11.5 percent already this year,” he said. The agency moved 8.7 million passengers in 2005.
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