Pierce Transit continues to provide connections from South Hill and beyond

Connecting downtown Puyallup residents with South Hill via public transportation has been a success, largely thanks to the Puyallup Connector, a Pierce Transit bus which shuttles residents to medical, shopping and recreational destinations.

The Puyallup Connector, initially launched as a demonstration project, was put into permanent operation earlier this year following a yearlong pilot to see if residents would jump on board with the the idea of taking public transportation.

Ridership on the Puyallup Connector totaled 22,789 boardings through September 2015, with averages of 96 weekday boardings and 69 Saturday boardings.

“Ridership is still growing,” said Pierce Transit CEO Sue Dreier, who was named to the position in April after serving as COO at Salem-Keizer Transit, a public transportation system in Salem, Oregon. “Yet it is still lower than we expect.”

Dreier is hopeful that the 16-percent uptick in ridership on Pierce Transit’s special routes during the Washington State Fair allowed folks to see just how easy it is to utilize public transportation in Pierce County.

“The Puyallup Fair service was up this year,” Dreier said. “We just brought it back last year after we discontinued it in 2011, 2012 and 2013, during the economic downturn. We were happy with the Fair service.”

With the spread-out landscape that makes up Pierce County, providing viable public transport for all can be a challenge for Pierce Transit, forcing officials to generate more creative options.

“There isn’t enough population density to build robust transit systems,” Dreier said.

To make up for the lack of a robust transit system, Pierce Transit provides van pools, which allows a group of eight to 12 people living and working nearby each other to share a ride to work to reduce the cost of commuting.

“We have 356 van pools in Pierce County,” said public relations officer Rebecca Japhet. “Pierce Transit is essentially the matchmaker for van pools. Transit provides so many connections between people.”

Pierce Transit has also focused on providing public transportation options that extend far beyond Puyallup, adding more than 40,000 service hours to its various routes.

This story was originally published November 13, 2015 at 9:35 AM with the headline "Pierce Transit continues to provide connections from South Hill and beyond."