EVERETT — Most of the people who jumped aboard the mass transit bandwagon last summer to escape rising gas prices appear to be staying there.
In fact, in some cases, more are hopping aboard.
Transit agencies and riders report that the rapid drop in fuel prices since late July has resulted in very little drop in ridership.
“We are essentially retaining the folks that have made the switch to transit,” Sound Transit spokeswoman Linda Robson said.
Community Transit, the largest transit agency in Snohomish County, had its best-ever month in October, spokesman Tom Pearce said.
This comes on the heels of record-setting months in May, June and July, he said.
Why? Though gas prices are less than half of what they were in late July, riding the bus is still a good deal, said Kim Kidd of Lake Stevens, waiting for a bus home at the Everett Transit Center on Tuesday.
She said her husband Phil was spending up to $25 a day to drive from Lake Stevens to his boat-building job in Kent, south of Seattle.
In the summer, he started taking the bus to work and she started riding it more for trips beyond Lake Stevens and Everett.
“We were saving about $400 to $500 per month in gas” during the summer, she said.
Now, though Kidd’s husband would pay only about $12 a day for gas if he were to drive, the bus trip costs only $8 round trip, she said.
“We probably could take the car, but we don’t,” Kidd said.
Jennifer Rector of Granite Falls, who takes Community Transit from Granite Falls to Edmonds Community College, said she’s seen a very slight drop-off in the mornings — but only after a big increase.
“About two months ago, it really, really went up,” she said.
About 1.1 million trips were made on Community Transit buses during its record-breaking October, compared to slightly more than 1 million in July and 969,000 in October 2007, spokesman Tom Pearce said.
Average daily boardings increased 15.7 percent from October 2007, Pearce said. And this came in spite of a fare increase that month — from $1.25 to $1.50 for the basic adult local fare, from $3 to $3.50 for some commuter routes and from $3.75 to $4.50 for others.
It’s been a record-breaking year at Sound Transit as well, Robson said. The peak came in July, when an average of nearly 62,000 riders boarded buses on each weekday throughout the Puget Sound area.
Average weekday boardings — both on buses and on Sounder commuter rail — were up 21 percent in October over the same month last year, she said.
Boardings dipped to an average of about 59,000 per weekday in September, but that number was still 22 percent higher than September 2007, she said.
“Our park-and-ride lots are still full,” Robson said. “This minute, three-quarters of the park-and-ride facilities that Sound Transit serves are either at or over capacity.”
Two Snohomish County express bus routes jumped by more than 50 percent in ridership from September 2007 to the same month in 2008, Robson said.
Route 532, from Everett to Bellevue, was boarded 51 percent more times. Route 535, from Lynnwood to Bellevue, experienced a 55 percent increase.
Sounder commuter rail ridership between Everett and Seattle increased 18 percent for weekdays and 14 percent for special weekend events from October 2007 to October 2008, Robson said. A big increase was noticed in June after the station in Mukilteo opened at the end of May, she said.
Most transit agencies experience a peak in ridership during the summer and early fall and then a drop-off toward the holidays, officials said. At Everett Transit, however, ridership has continued to rise since summer, spokeswoman Kate Reardon said.
October hit an all-time high of 239,572 trips, she said. That’s after a climb from 192,119 in January to 213,673 in July.
Everett was the only agency of the three to have numbers for November. As of Nov. 25, 175,654 trips were taken on Everett buses, which put it on a pace to reach 210,784 by the end of the month — not as high as October but still considerably higher than last November’s 184,576.
Ridership on Everett Transit is all local, because the agency serves only the city of Everett, and it’s not an alternative to long, gas-guzzling commutes.
Still, “Our ridership numbers do not appear to have been affected by the drop in the gas prices,” Reardon said.
Reporter Bill Sheets: 425-339-3439 or bsheets@heraldnet.com.
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