WES hits 1-year mark

Submitted by KATU.com Staff on Tue, 2010-02-02 18:12

Tuesday marked the first anniversary of TriMet's Westside Express Service (WES) that connects Tualatin, Wilsonville, Tigard and Beaverton.

According to TriMet, 42 percent of the line's riders previously drove to their destinations.

Still, ridership on the WES isn't growing as fast as initial projections had estimated. Transit leaders blame the economy, saying high unemployment has resulted in fewer commuters.

This article originally appeared on Wilsonville News

Filed Under:

Transportation

Comments

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 2010-02-02 18:51.

No comment on how much it is costing the taxpayers per rider?????

Submitted by Erik H. (not verified) on Tue, 2010-02-02 21:45.

It's about $30 per boarding ride.

The average TriMet bus costs about $2.80 per boarding ride.

The MAX average is less...but on a line-by-line basis, only the Blue Line is about $1-$1.50/boarding ride. The Red, Green and Yellow lines, plus the Streetcar, are in the $2-3 range.

The 72 Killingsworth/82nd Avenue bus line, is under $1.00 per boarding ride and is TriMet's cheapest line to operate - despite running buses every 6-7 minutes apart.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 2010-02-02 19:04.

"WES hits 1-year mark" ???

Gosh, I hope no one was hurt!

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 2010-02-04 22:18.

Mark's doing well... thanks for caring.

HA!

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 2010-02-02 19:10.

Stupid KGW refers to a birthday...how stupid. I'd like to see the birth certificate and who the mother and father are. Birthdays are for humans and animals, anniversities are for non-living things (ya know "carbon based").

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 2010-02-02 19:11.

I think the last thing I heard it was like 24 bucks per rider based on 2400 riders..so its probably more like 50 bucks now.

Submitted by Jeepers (not verified) on Tue, 2010-02-02 19:50.

Yea a whole year........... Too bad ridership wise they have only carried a monyhs worth of people. But that's ok blame it on the economy.

Submitted by Erik H. (not verified) on Tue, 2010-02-02 21:44.

Um, KATU? Hello?

Your editing is as good as the TV station I used to watch in a little town of 20,000 folks in Montana, who used to show a chemical tank car as an on-air graphic for Amtrak.

You have a picture of two MAX trains.

Your story is about WES.

Seriously, do you not have any file footage of WES? I have video of WES on my YouTube account if you really want to use it (with full credit, of course.)

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 2010-02-03 09:06.

They used this picture because of the 2 hotties in the picture, otherwise why would they use a blurry non-associated pic?

Submitted by Chris McMullen (not verified) on Tue, 2010-02-02 23:12.

I think Tri-met has cornered the market when it comes to failure.

Submitted by Jenjen (not verified) on Wed, 2010-02-03 08:25.

What a complete waste of tax payer money in a time where goverment needs to tighten their belts with spending.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 2010-02-03 09:46.

Intresting that washington and oregon are getting 586 million for a high speed train line in light of the fact that WES has been a bit of a flop.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 2010-02-03 13:27.

Apples and oranges ... there's a world of difference between a commuter train from Beaverton to Wilsonville and a high speed train between PDX and SEA. Thousands of people will benefit from the high speed train... business people, weekenders, families, students, etc. That train is needed. WES wasn't.

Submitted by Erik H. (not verified) on Wed, 2010-02-03 14:00.

It's true it's not a true like comparison (Amtrak Cascades, WES) but WES is an ODOT sponsored project (ODOT owns the right-of-way from Tigard south to Wilsonville and continuing to north of Keizer) and Amtrak Cascades is sponsored by WSDOT (and to a lesser extent, ODOT).

The fact is that WSDOT has numerous successful rail projects under their belt. Amtrak Cascades wouldn't happen without WSDOT; WSDOT owns most of the trainsets and has heavily promoted the project. WSDOT helped launch Sounder, the successful Puget Sound (true) commuter rail system from Everett to Tacoma. And WSODT has acquired numerous freight rail lines in Eastern Washington and purchased a fleet of grain hoppers that growers can cost-effectively use to ship goods to grain elevators on the west side of the state.

ODOT owns a couple of rail lines but one of them (the Astoria Line) is embaroged on the west side; ODOT has a partial ownership stake in the Port of Tillamook Bay Railroad (shut down near-permanently), WES is a failure... In fact the only "successes" ODOT has in the rail department is having purchased the railroad from Banks to Vernonia and turning it over to OPRD and made into a bike trail.

However I can't blame ODOT 100%, the Legislature is much to blame for the situation, and just that Oregon and Washington are two different states. The travel market between Portland and Eugene is nowhere near the market for Portland and Seattle. Seattle is simply a much, much larger metro area. Sounder runs on a mainline railroad and serves several cities of significant size; while WES really "goes from nowhere, to nowhere" - Wilsonville, Tualatin and Tigard really cannot support rail transport by themselves and yet those three towns are expected to support the southern 11 miles of a 15 mile commuter rail line. Beaverton-Hillsboro would have a better chance, except they have MAX.

Submitted by Chris McMullen (not verified) on Wed, 2010-02-03 14:01.

How much you wanna bet this high speed rail project will have a seriously negative ROI?

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 2010-02-04 22:19.

W: Westside's

E: Extravagent

S: Spending