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closeRidership on Whatcom Transportation Authority buses has grown faster than in any other major U.S. city, according to recently released Federal Transit Administration statistics.
WTA topped the list of the country's 150 largest transit agencies. That comes with bragging rights because those 150 agencies represent 97 percent of the nation's transit ridership, said Keith Gates, who heads the FTA's National Transit Database Program.
"It is flattering," WTA General Manager Richard Walsh said. "It's not my aspiration necessarily to exceed others. I just want to do the very best we can here."
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Agencies with top ridership growth
Here are the top 10 U.S. transit agencies in terms of ridership growth. Statistics compare growth from July 2007 to June 2008 to the same period the previous year.
- Whatcom Transportation Authority: 20.7 percent
- San Joaquin Regional Transit District (Stockton, Calif.): 19 percent
- Lane Transit District (Eugene, Ore.): 18.7 percent
- Las Vegas Monorail Company: 17.8 percent
- Charlotte Area Transit System (Charlotte, N.C., includes territory in South Carolina): 16.5 percent
- Regional Public Transportation Authority, Valley Metro (Phoenix-Mesa, Ariz.): 15.8 percent
- Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority (Seattle): 14.9 percent
- Chapel Hill Transit (Durham, N.C.): 14.8 percent
- Central New York Regional Transportation Authority (Syracuse, N.Y.): 13.5 percent
- Spokane Transit Authority (Spokane, includes territory in north Idaho): 12.7 percent
Ridership grew 20.7 percent from July 2007 to June 2008, compared to the same period the previous year. As a whole, the 150 top agencies saw an increase of 2.6 percent.
Gates said agencies nationwide are seeing ridership boosts because of the high price of fuel. Local officials point to that, as well as high ridership from Western Washington University students armed with a new universal bus pass paid through student fees. The pass went into effect nearly a year ago.
But even this summer, with the majority of WWU students on summer break, ridership has been high, Walsh said.
Partly the numbers reflect service restructuring this past year, when the agency dramatically increased the number of service hours and launched the once-every-15-minutes GO Lines to entice people who could otherwise drive, officials said.
During the past three years, the agency boosted service by 38 percent. During that same period, the county's population grew by 5.6 percent. The blue, green and gold lines hit the road in July 2005, the red line in June 2006 and the plum line and an extension of the gold line in January 2008.
But ridership growth has brought growing pains, including crowded buses (sometimes standing-room only on the one-hour-each-way bus to Kendall) and requests for more evening and weekend service the agency simply can't afford.
High bus fuel prices and faltering sales tax revenues have pinched WTA's budget, and it still needs to replace 33 aging buses. Officials are trying to trim expenses, but it's still likely they'll dip into savings next year. In the future, WTA may have to increase fares. Even then, major service expansions may not be possible without county voters approving a sales tax increase.
Economics has encouraged bus use, but WTA spokeswoman Maureen McCarthy also pointed to Bellingham's culture.
"For a time, we had this latent group of people who wanted to do the right thing but for whom the convenience of a car was still in the forefront of their minds," she said. "Bellingham has been one of these places that's been on the verge of a positive change for a long time."
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