Ominous Starter Line Ridership.

 Previous posts have questioned Sound Transit’s Starter Line farebox recovery expectation and the predicted 4000-5700 weekday riders.   Sound Transit stopped releasing their Quarterly Service Provided Performance Reports in Q1/2021. It had detailed vehicle hours operated, miles, trips, boardings per trip, and the cost per boarding. That the cost per boarding during Q1 2020, pre-covid, was $5.82. It also provided riders added at each of the light rail stations. 

Sound Transit replaced the boarding data with a “Ridership-Ridership” website with updates monthly on all its transit modes. The website initially included the following boardings for August. (It’s no longer available)

Bellevue Downtown.                               737   

BelRed                                                    181

East Main                                                142

Overlake Village                                      266

Redmond TC                                          999

Spring District                                         233

South Bellevue.                                       632

Wilburton                                                200

Total  Boardings                                      3390

Assuming each Starter Line commuter made to-and-from destination boardings, so the number of riders is half the boardings.  Thus, in August,1695 commuters rode the Starter Line daily, a fraction of the 4000-5700 projections. (Similar to the 14,721 riders for their 41,000-49,000 Northgate predictions)

The costs of providing that service is another concern. Sound Transit budgets light rail car operating costs as ~$30 per revenue mile, so a 2-car train will cost ~$800 for a round trip on the 6.6 mile route.  Their schedule, trains every 10 minutes for 16 hours a day, requires 96 trips. At $30 per-mile-per-car, the 6.6-mile extension would cost $76,000 per day.  

Thus, in August, it cost Sound Transit $19.50 for each of the 3390 boardings.  Dwarfing the Q1 2020 $5.82 cost. Assuming the commuter paid $3 for boarding, the farebox recovery $3/19.50 is 12.6%, about half Sound Transit’s target.  

What makes the number of Starter Line riders so egregious is Sound Transit plans to use Line 2 to provide half of the trains to Lynnwood and beyond.  Their current operating plans for Line 2 would require 4-car trains every 8 minutes during most of ot the day.  

Its “unlikely” 4-car trains every 8 minutes will attrack more Starter Line route riders.  However, increasing  the number of light rail cars from 2 to 4 and number of trains from 6 to 7.5 per hour will result in Starter Line operating costs 2.5 times higher, $190,000 for 16 hour service; 2.4% farebox recovery.

The bottom line is multiple posts on this blog have detailed why Sound Transit should have never been allowed to confiscate the I-90 Bridge center roadways or extend light rail beyond UW or SeaTac.  The resulting increased operating costs have far outpaced firebox revenue, reducing recovery.   It's now limited to detailing attempts to mitigate the damage by terminating East Link at CID and opposing light rail extensions.  The ominous Starter Line ridership is another reason to do so.