Light-rail ridership exceeds projections

In 3 months, new T-REX line nearly at one-year goal

Kevin Flynn, Rocky Mountain News

Thursday, March 15, 2007

RTD's new Southeast Corridor light-rail trains ramped up to near their one-year ridership projections in February after a snowy start to the service in December.

Ridership estimates from the transit agency - which extrapolates the number of riders from automated counters installed in about 30 percent of the train cars - are that the four lines serving the 19-mile Southeast Corridor along Interstates 25 and 225 handled an average of 33,323 riders per work day.

Total weekday ridership on the entire light-rail system averaged 62,523, higher than the RTD projection of 54,000 with the completion of T-REX.

"It shows the public embraces light rail as an important part of their daily commute," RTD spokesman Scott Reed said.

The Southeast Corridor was built as part of the $1.75 billion T-REX highway and transit project. The trains began running Nov. 17.

In the studies leading up to construction of the addition to RTD's 13-year-old light-rail system, Southeast Corridor daily ridership was projected to be 33,800 on an average weekday at the end of the first year of service.

Daily ridership is the total number of people boarding the trains over the course of a day, so a commuter who goes to and from work by light rail would be counted as two riders.

It took a few months for the Southeast Corridor trains to gain riders. The average workday ridership in December, when states of emergency were declared as fierce snowstorms hit twice on workdays, was 26,296. In January, it was 31,072.

The higher ridership is a plus for farebox revenue, although fares cover only about 20 percent of the transit system cost. Taxpayers subsidize the system with a 1-percent metro sales tax.

The poorest-performing line is the G Line between Nine Mile and Lincoln Stations. That segment averaged fewer than 700 riders a day. Meanwhile, the H Line from Aurora's Nine Mile to downtown has attracted almost as many riders per day as the longer segment from Lincoln Avenue to downtown.

The surprising part of the report is that ridership on the system's older segment, the Southwest Corridor to Littleton, didn't drop as much as expected. RTD projected that many riders would switch their trips over to the new line if they lived closer to Southeast Corridor stations.

While some of that happened, it was less than RTD anticipated. In fact, the retention of more ridership on the Littleton line caused a problem when longtime riders complained that their service had suffered because of the opening of the T-REX line.

RTD was forced to add more cars back to the Littleton line after it initially reduced D Line service to two-car trains rather than three.

The Southwest Corridor's average weekday ridership before the completion of T-REX had been 35,721. In February, it averaged 29,200, while RTD had expected it might drop to as low as 20,000.

"People have became very loyal riders," Reed said.

RTD has installed automated counters on only 24 of its 83 light-rail train cars. It disperses them throughout the system each day to gather raw numbers, sorting the results by each line to determine how many passengers are riding each leg.

"It's a matter of shifting those cars around to get reliable boarding totals at various stations so we could determine what the ridership in a given corridor was," Reed said.

"We do our best to ensure that every trip in the system is covered at least once a month," said Bill Beuthel, who calculates ridership for RTD.

Light-rail ridership since T-REX opened

Dec. Jan. Feb.

• SE Corridor total 26,296 31,072 33,323

E Line 5,036 5,074 5,693

F Line 10,676 13,764 14,285

G Line 654 677 678

H Line 9,930 11,557 12,668

• SW Corridor total 26,631 28,492 29,200

C Line 4,586 4,180 4,416

D Line 22,045 24,313 24,785Source: Rtd. Figures May Not Add Up Because Of Rounding.

flynnk@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5247