“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” -Martin Luther King, Jr

Friday, February 17, 2012

Promoting the Boondoggle

When in reality, WES ridership hasn't really increased at all. The weekly ridership numbers have been floating around 8,000 for quite a while now. It appears to be at its peak and flatlined. But of course the percentages make WES look SO much better than the actual numbers, so TriMet goes with that instead. On top of it all, WES carries the LEAST riders of  any transit mode TriMet has.


Here are the real figures:

Bus: Weekly trips were up 1.5 percent to 1,163,300
MAX: Weekly trips were up 0.7 percent to 756,100
WES:  Weekly trips were up 17.4 percent to 8,100

So sorry to burst your bubble, TriMet, but BUS is actually leading the way. How much ridership did WES have in the past few months? December had only 7,250 riders, November had 8,000 riders, October had  8,450 riders which TriMet boasted as ‘a new record high’ for WES, telling us that WES ridership probably won’t increase all that much, if at all, anymore. Oh, and September weekly WES ridership? Only 8,150 riders. 50 riders more than January. WES ridership has plateaued—it is clear to anybody who doesn’t let themselves get blinded by TriMet’s phony propaganda.

And a little tip, TriMet? Maybe is WES ran more than just weekday rush hour, say all day and on weekends, you might have more ridership? You shot 
yourself in the foot with that move.

It'd be nice if we at least had one media outlet who reported the truth rather than just what TriMet wants everybody to see. The Boregonian is one of the worst culprits:

2 comments:

MAX Redline said...

The Zero and The Trib seem to just re-publish Tri-Met press releases.

WES is subsidized to the tune of nearly $18 per rider (not counting the Washington County and Wilsonville subsidies). Of course, if they pulled the plug on WES, they'd have to return the federal money used to build it.

It slays me that Tri-Met has the most aged bus "fleet" of any major metro area in the USA, yet they keep cannibalizing bus routes to pay for more rail. Tri-Met isn't a transit agency, it's a development agency.

And what they build isn't "transit-oriented development" - it's "development-oriented transit".

Adri said...

"The Zero and The Trib seem to just re-publish Tri-Met press releases."
Yea. That's what all the 'news media' outlets do.

I don't know what else to say. You've got it. That's what TriMet has become.