Downtown Redmond Light Rail Extension

The Downtown Redmond Light Rail Extension, the Seattle Times heralded with a January 31 Traffic Lab article as, “A pair of new light rail stations the May 10th opening with fan fair”, will be the next Sound Transit ST3 extension to debut. 

The 3.4-mile extension from the Redmond Technology Station(RTS)  to downtown Redmond Transit Center (RTC) adds 6.8 miles to the current 13.2-mile Starter Line round trip to-and-from South Bellevue T/C.   Sound Transit budgets light rail cars at ~$30 per mile. Thus, a 2-car train to-and-from RTS tp RTC will add ~$400 to the   ~$800 current Starter Line round trip cost.   

 

Maintaining the current schedule, trains every 10 minutes from 5:30 a.m.to 9:30 p.m,  requires 96 round trips adds ~$38,400 to the current  ~$76,800 for a total $113,200 weekday cost for Starter Line operation.  The Sound Transits “Ridership—Ridership” March reported 2476 average weekday boardings for the current Starter Line route.  Assuming all the boardings resulted in $3.00 fares for ~$7500 daily fare box revenue, and a fare box recovery of ~10%.  The Downtown Redmond extension costs wlll reduce the farebox recovery for those for current Startline boardings to ~6.6%. 

 

Even those numbers don’t reflect the true fare box recovery since many riders fail to pay the $3.00 fare. For example,  the 4th Quarterly Financial Report for  2024 reported the 29,518,000 riders only paid $38,933,000 fare money or $1.32 per rider.  While it’s not clear how many of those not paying were Starter Line boarders, the actual RTS to South Bellevue P&R farebox recovery was well below Sound Transit supposed”targets”. 

 

The farebox recovery also depends on how many commuters will walk to the downtown RTC or drive to the 1200-stall Marymore P&R for the light rail ride to Bellevue  T/C or South Bellevue P&R.  Commuters currently have access to King County Metro’s RapidRide B.  Its routed from Redmond Transit Center (RTC) through Redmond Technology Station (RTS) to Bellevue Transit Center (BTC), 

 

The RabidRide  route from RTC-to-RTS provides 10 scheduled stops for access with 3 in Redmond and several along 148th Ave.  The improved access wirth added stops requires 15 minutes for the route.  That adds to the 23 minutes from RTS to Bellevue T/C on RapidRide compared to the current 13 minutes on the Starter Line schedule.

 

The bottom line is the Downtown Redmond light rail extension debut later this year will demonstrate whether shorter travel times outweigh the lack of access for commuters into Bellevue.  The 2024 Starter Line ridership results show it didn’t, likely reaffirming the folly of another ST3 extension.