C-Tran Ridership by the Numbers, 2009-2014
For more photos and a chart showing the most-used and least-used routes in 2014, plus total ridership statistics for 2009 through 2014, hover mouse over the photo above and click on the directional arrow.
Jonathan Sincock begins his commute to work at precisely 6:22 a.m. each morning.
It’s a longer trip than most Clark County workers navigate. Sincock doesn’t reach his destination until close to 8 a.m., more than an hour and a half later. He makes the same trip in reverse in the afternoon.
The daily trek puts Sincock in rare company: He’s one of the few people who regularly rides C-Tran’s No. 47 bus route all the way into Vancouver from Yacolt. He also catches a second bus on the way to his job as a delivery driver.
Sincock, who lives two blocks from the Yacolt bus stop, rides the bus by choice. He could drive himself, but has calculated the financial benefit of leaving the car at home.
“Basically I could tell you (it’s) about $350 savings,” Sincock said. “My job pays what it does, but this makes it pay a little more.”
Judy Tiffany always keeps a bus schedule close by. The Vancouver resident uses C-Tran for “everything” from her home near Fourth Plain Boulevard and C-Tran’s busiest route, the No. 4. Tiffany is also a caretaker for her 85-year-old mother, Dorris Cotten.
Tiffany rides the bus out of necessity. She used to have a car, but that’s no longer an option.
“It died, and I can’t afford a new one,” Tiffany said. “I can’t afford a used one, either.”
The routes used by Sincock and Tiffany represent two extremes of the C-Tran system. The No. 47 Battle Ground Limited route is one of the transit agency’s least-used, with slightly more than 6,000 boardings in 2014. The No. 4 on Fourth Plain, by contrast, carried more than 1.6 million boardings last year, by far the most of any route.
Yet both represent an important part of the larger network, according to C-Tran. The agency strives to balance productivity with coverage to reach all of the communities within its service area, said C-Tran spokesman Jim Quintana. Those two goals don’t always overlap, he said.
But C-Tran has seen its total ridership dip in recent years, and its performance has come under scrutiny at times. C-Tran’s critics often lob claims of seeing empty or nearly empty buses rolling around the county — a view that doesn’t tell the whole story, agency managers say. Meanwhile, C-Tran continues to look for ways to boost its stagnant numbers.
C-Tran estimates about three-quarters of its riders are transit-dependent with few other options. It’s the other quarter — people who choose to ride the bus — where the agency may focus its efforts, Quintana said.
“They’ve got a different motivation. They’ve got options,” Quintana said. “That’s where we feel our growth can be.”
No. 47: ‘rest period’
Among the five C-Tran routes with the lowest ridership numbers, three are “Connector” routes. That’s the dial-a-ride service that users can call to make a reservation within a specific area. It’s also the only option for La Center and Ridgefield, which aren’t served by a regular fixed bus route.
The least-used fixed route in C-Tran’s system is the No. 47, which stretches between Yacolt and Delta Park in North Portland. It runs just twice a day. The bus leaves Yacolt at 6:22 a.m. on weekdays, and returns to town at the end of its evening run exactly 12 hours later.
On a recent Thursday morning, Sincock was one of five people who hopped on the bus as it left Yacolt in the pre-dawn darkness. Most were regulars; driver Tom King has come to recognize their faces, and they know his.
The handful of frequent C-Tran riders in Yacolt know each other, too. They even sit in the same seats most days, Sincock said. He and others said they enjoy the relatively quiet bus ride from north Clark County, even if it takes longer.
“A rest period before and after work doesn’t seem like a bad thing,” Sincock said.
Not everyone rides daily. On the same Thursday, Stan MacArthur boarded for his weekly ride. The Chelatchie Prairie-area resident rode his bike to the Yacolt bus stop, planning to travel to his parents’ house in Vancouver. From there, he’d commute to his job as a machinist in Portland, working long days before catching the evening bus back to Yacolt on Monday.
C-Tran uses passengers per hour as a major indicator of a route’s productivity. By that standard, the agency knows the run to Yacolt doesn’t measure up. But C-Tran provides service there because Yacolt — and every city in Clark County — opted into C-Tran’s boundaries during a reorganization in 2005. The transit agency also collects sales taxes from all of those places.
“We feel like we have an obligation to them, and they sit on our board or are represented on our board,” Quintana said.
The type of transit service each community receives varies. La Center and Ridgefield, with relatively few riders, receive only the Connector routes. Yacolt piggy-backs on a longer route that serves Battle Ground and connects to Portland. Camas and Washougal have the Connector and their own regular fixed route, the No. 92. All of those arrangements have evolved over the years. The service district doesn’t include Woodland.
“You have to work with those jurisdictions to determine you’re going to provide service,” said Larry Ham, C-Tran’s operations planning supervisor. “But what kind of service?”
No. 4: ‘never empty’
If taking the bus from Yacolt is a quiet, relaxing experience, taking the No. 4 is just the opposite.
Tiffany has been riding C-Tran for decades and said she’s seen plenty of changes on the Fourth Plain route during that time. The biggest difference: “The No. 4 just keeps getting more and more crowded,” she said. Buses with standing room only aren’t uncommon, she said.
The route serves a range of people along the corridor, including seniors, students and workers. Some are commuters. Some are simply doing their grocery shopping or other errands.
The No. 4 predictably gets a little more crowded near the beginning of each month, Tiffany said. That’s when many people on the corridor receive Social Security and disability checks, she said.
“If you’re transit-dependent, you have to plan out everything ahead of time,” Tiffany said.
For years, C-Tran driver Todd Shade saw the No. 4 from a different vantage point, behind the steering wheel. He drove it long enough that the 11-year veteran of C-Tran used to be known as “king of the 4” among his colleagues. (Shade is now assigned to two other routes.)
Shade described a mix of riders: people going to their jobs, to medical appointments, to class or elsewhere. Like other drivers, he grew to know some of his regulars. The task of keeping the tight schedule and meeting the constant demands of a crowded bus amounted to “multitasking at its best,” Shade said.
Tiffany boarded the No. 4 for a midmorning trip to Portland on a recent Friday. She took a seat near the front of a bus that was about half-full.
“The bus is never empty,” Tiffany said.
Ridership declines
C-Tran recorded a total ridership of about 6.4 million boardings in 2014 — its third straight year of decline, even as public transit use is on the rise nationwide.
The agency attributes at least part of that drop to a new ridership counting method it started using in 2013. The most recent figure amounted to a 2 percent drop from the previous year, which isn’t considered a major cause for concern, Quintana said. But C-Tran’s current ridership is about 10 percent lower than it was in 2008, when total boardings topped 7 million.
Individual routes within the C-Tran system are constantly evaluated, said Ham, the operations planning supervisor. Minor tweaks such as time changes can happen relatively simply. A major modification or re-route requires a more involved process that can take up to a year, Ham said.
As for the complaints about empty buses, people should consider where a given vehicle is in its route, Ham said. C-Tran’s Express routes, for example, take busloads of commuters to downtown Portland, then return to Clark County empty.
“The bus has to go the other direction at some point,” he said, adding that other routes have fluctuations of their own.
As it looks for ways to boost ridership in the coming years, C-Tran expects its busiest corridor to get busier. The agency plans to open “The Vine,” a bus rapid transit line along Fourth Plain that will replace part of the No. 4. The enhanced bus system is expected to open in late 2016.
C-Tran hopes the new system will boost ridership and free up more resources to use elsewhere in its system. Whether its enough to push C-Tran’s total ridership upward, and in line with the national trend, remains to be seen.
“We want to be part of that trend,” Quintana said.
