About this blog

My name is Bill Hirt and I'm a candidate to be a Representative from the 48th district in the Washington State legislature. My candidacy stems from concern the legislature is not properly overseeing the WSDOT and Sound Transit East Link light rail program. I believe East Link will be a disaster for the entire eastside. ST will spend 5-6 billion on a transportation project that will increase, not decrease cross-lake congestion, violates federal environmental laws, devastates a beautiful part of residential Bellevue, creates havoc in Bellevue's central business district, and does absolutely nothing to alleviate congestion on 1-90 and 405. The only winners with East Link are the Associated Builders and Contractors of Western Washington and their labor unions.

This blog is an attempt to get more public awareness of these concerns. Many of the articles are from 3 years of failed efforts to persuade the Bellevue City Council, King County Council, east side legislators, media, and other organizations to stop this debacle. I have no illusions about being elected. My hope is voters from throughout the east side will read of my candidacy and visit this Web site. If they don't find them persuasive I know at least I tried.

Thursday, April 9, 2026

Sound Transit’s Ridership-Ridership Report?

 The April 2 Sound Transit Executive Committee Meeting video included CEO Constantine heralding the March 28th 2 Line cross lake debut’s success. We appreciate everyone who contributed, noting that the 206,000 riders was surpassed only by participation in the Seahawk Superbowl celebration.  

The ridership number, the result from lasers counting those entering the train cars at each station.  Sound Transit uses those results for detailing boardings in the Link riders in a monthly report “Sound Transit Ridership-All Modes”.  It includes bar charts showing monthly total boardings for Weekday, Saturday, and Sunday from Jan 2024 to Feb 2025 for all their transit modes.  Also included are columns of Month, Total Boardings, Average Boardings per Day, Month-Over-Month % Change, and % Change vs. 2019 for the modes. 

The Link Average Boardings per Day column can be scanned to provide boardings at each of the Link’ stations. It’s not clear how the car entry results at each station are monitored.  Again, the data must be readily available since the results from the March 28th debut were available at the April 2nd meeting.  

Yet the latest result of a Ridership-Ridership report search for the data in the column for “Average Boardings per Day” is for December 2025.  Thus, Sound Transit, who recently authorized a design-build contract for $874,729,393 for a OMF South to service light rail train cars in 2032, won’t release the number of boardings for the train cars they will service in 2026.   

The bottom line is public transit’s goal should be to provide those who can’t or won’t drive with access to transit to where they want to go.  The boarding data in the monthly ridership reports on Sound Transit’s success.  Data needed to validate spending hundreds of millions on further ST3 extensions. They should not be allowed to continue not doing so in 2026. 

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