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LIGHT RAIL COUNTS (OR DOES IT?)

After the opening of west side light rail, the Oregon Transportation Institute volunteers counted riders on both the east and west side to measure the number of "commuters" using the line. Loads were measured at screenlines on both sides of the "central city" (downtown Portland including Lloyd Center) between the hours of 6:00 AM and 9:00 AM to determine the effect that west and east side had on reducing congestion on the immediately abutting freeways, after the opening of the west side line. It is at these times that freeways are congested.

Counts were taken on September 17th and 22nd, 1998. West side light rail opened for operations on September 14th. The transit agency, Tri Met, announced that it had distributed 60,000 free tickets and pre-opening arrangements were made with major employers in the vicinity of the west side line for employers to make free passes available to employees (i.e. more than 10,000 to Intel). Prior experience with the opening of the east side line and lines elsewhere indicate that people, who do not become regular users, experiment with new systems in the first six months of operation. The weather at the time of the counts was ideal, a factor that would encourage more people to walk to rail stations or to feeder buses than in rainy weather.

All of the above would tend to inflate these ridership counts.

Beside the number of riders, two other factors must be considered in evaluating the efficacy of the introduction of a new mode of transit: the number of riders which used other transit modes that have been discontinued or altered and the effect on the roads. Following the west side and east side ridership summary, we will provide the ridership of discontinued or altered bus routes. In another report, we will show the effect on the roads.

A comparison of the west side counts of people using light rail to go to and from Portland and beyond, shown below, with the prior cordon counts of people using buses to go to Portland during the peak hours, shown below, indicates a negligible increase in transit usage. For the cost of $963 million, a maximum of 416 cars were removed from the roads into Portland during the commute period as follows:

West side bidirectional MAX riders                                 3,916

Less: Bus riders on discontinued or altered routes            3,500*

Maximum additional transit users due to light rail                 416

* The table shown below indicates 3,450 passengers on altered or discontinued bus routes in the corridor as of October 1997. Tri Met's performance reports show that bus ridership increased 1.4% during this period. Applying this percentage to these routes, increases the number of riders on altered or discontinued routes to 3,500.

Since the average number of passengers per vehicle is 1.12, the number of vehicles removed from the road by the addition of 416 transit users is 371.

West side light rail cost $963 million to remove 371 cars from the road during the commute period or a cost of $2,595,687 per car. This assumes that none of the additional transit users were formerly carpool members.

The details, by train and time, of these counts is shown after the following presentation of the AM peak cordon counts for discontinued and altered bus routes on the west side due to the introduction of  west side light rail. These counts were made in October 1997 as part of the "Westside Corridor Project Traffic Management Plan Evaluation", a joint project of the Oregon Department of Transportation and Tri Met. As stated in their report, "Transit cordon counts record the number of passengers on transit vehicles entering or departing the downtown Portland area during peak hours."    

* Routes 20 and 58 continue through the measured cordon carrying fewer passengers because of the route configuration. No counts were available from the transit agency for these altered routes and sample observations revealed a greatly reduced number of riders. As a result, route 20 was included and route 58 was not to present ridership approximating the sample observations.

The following are the actual counts of riders per train which are summarized at the beginning of this report.