The news: Despite statewide decreases in public transportation revenues across the state, Pullman Transit continues to see increasing ridership and plans to expand.
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Liz Creelman shivered as she clung to her advanced accounting textbook Tuesday night. Creelman, a junior accounting and information systems major, was one of several students waiting for Pullman Transit's south route bus.
When the bus arrived, only a handful of seats were vacant.
“It’s worse during the day when it’s standing-room only,” Creelman said.
Creelman rides Pullman transit at least twice a day and has done so for the past two years. She said it’s cheaper than having a car and often safer in the winter.
“I have to pay the mandatory transit fee, so why not take advantage of it,” she said.
The number of Pullman Transit riders has increased 1 to 2 percent each year, said Chris Mitchell, Pullman Transit operations supervisor. Last year had the largest number of riders so far – 1.3 million – an increase of about 100,000 from the year before.
“A lot of (our growth) is based on our ability to put out more service,” Mitchell said. “We stay pretty much full. As we can add more seats, we get more riders.”
Creelman said the express routes have seemed “a lot more crowded” this year especially at the beginning of the semester. Justin Cox, a transfer student using Pullman Transit for the first time this semester, also noted that the buses are usually crowded.
“But there’s a lot of students so you have to expect that,” the junior criminal justice major said.
Statewide, the number of transit riders has also gradually increased since 2003, according to the 2007 Washington State Summary of Public Transportation report.
“Ridership has grown 18.12 percent since 2003 adding nearly 30 million passenger trips during the past five years,” the report states.
But the increase in riders can’t go on forever, said Don Chartock, WSDOT project development coordinator. He said the economic recession has impacted state transit systems “quite severely.” Almost every one of the 30 transit systems in the state is bringing in less revenue.
“Up until recently, there has been growth in revenue, so there was also growth in the transit systems,” Chartock said. “But revenue started to go down about a year ago and that will ultimately result in less service and therefore less riders.”
He said he expects to see a number of transit systems turn to voters to try and get more revenue.
The economic recession has had a minimal impact on Pullman Transit because its funding sources are more stable, Mitchell said.
Though students did vote last year to increase the mandatory transit fee by $10 for full-time students, that was not to make up for declining revenue, but rather to pay for increased service to meet increasing demands.
“Students took initiative to help fund a lot of the additional service,” said John Shaheen, director of Parking and Transportation Services.
In addition to money from the contract with WSU and the student transit fee, Pullman Transit receives revenue from utility taxes and operating grants from the state.
Mitchell said he expects the number of people using Pullman Transit to increase, despite the projected decrease for the rest of the state.
Pullman Transit is even planning to expand, he said. The system should acquire five new buses by 2010. The buses will replace old ones in the current fleet, but four of the new buses will also be bigger.
“If we can expand the capacity of buses, we can transport more people,” he said.
Sources:
Liz Creelman - ecreelman@wsu.edu
Justin Cox - cox24@wsu.edu
Chris Mitchell – 509-332-6535
Don Chartock – 360-705-7875
John Shaheen – 509-335-4911
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