Ensuring a seamless transit experience at every step of the journey

It’s no secret that the past few years have not been easy for transit riders. Systems around the U.S. have been struggling; not just with low ridership, but also with passengers’ concerns about safety and cleanliness.

Given these concerns, now is an especially important time to focus on the passenger experience. If transit is not only to recover from the hit that it took during the pandemic, but to grow in ridership, we will have to re-double our efforts to ensure that we are meeting the needs of passengers now and looking for ways to improve their rides in the future.

Our passenger experience vision at Sound Transit is that we will deliver a transit experience that is dependable, safe, clean and available with informed riders, while striving to create an experience that is simple, seamless and intuitive for our riders. To be frank, at times, it has been a struggle to achieve that vision over the past few years.

We’ve been lucky that ridership on Link, our light rail system, has actually re-bounded to surpass our pre-COVID-19 levels, thanks in part to a popular new line extension. But, just like everyone else in public transit, we’ve heard loud and clear from our passengers that their riding experience isn’t what they had hoped it to be.

That’s why we’re putting a special focus on improving the passenger experience in 2023 with a number of initiatives, as we continue to welcome riders back to the system. These initiatives aren’t just a matter of getting things back on track. We’re looking for ways to take things to the next level, with new technology that will help riders as they plan trips and travel through the system.

Putting these efforts in place now is especially important – Sound Transit is undertaking the largest transit expansion programme in the U.S. thanks to the support of our region’s taxpayers. Over the next several years, the light rail system will more than double in size, from 26 miles to 62 miles. By the time our planned expansion is complete in the 2040s, the light rail network will have grown to 116 miles. Therefore, it’s crucial that we get the passenger experience right at this time, just as we’re about to undergo a period of major growth that will bring new riders into the system. 

Prioritising the needs of our riders

Some of the changes that we are instituting are directly addressing the issues of safety and cleanliness that our riders have been telling us about. One of the most visible changes that we will be making is introducing additional station agents into the system at select, higher-impact locations for 16 hours a day at two of our busiest stations in Spring 2023. The agents will be available to help answer questions, provide directions and, in general, supply riders with some extra support when they need it.

We have had a station agent at our SeaTac/Airport station for several years now, and passengers have expressed that they like having someone on-site to help them (all of our Sounder commuter rail stations have service agents). Station agents also provide another set of customer-focused eyes in the station, so that we can troubleshoot problems more quickly. These additional passenger touchpoints will give us an opportunity to evaluate how the role will work in busy stations where we see regular riders more often.

The station agents aren’t the only new faces that passengers will be seeing. Our Board has recently approved agreements with four security contractors to provide civilian security officers at Sound Transit stations and on-board trains. This means that riders should expect to start seeing more security officers throughout our system in the coming months.

The benefit of having multiple vendors is that a single provider is not the hook to provide the well over 300 security officers needed to be fully staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If a vendor is experiencing staffing challenges, then one of the other three providers can be tapped to rapidly fill that gap. 

Enhancing the customer experience right from the start Personnel are important, but so is the state of our stations and trains. We’re stepping up our station cleaning protocols and introducing new trash cans. Instead of waiting for trains to be cleaned when they’re taken out of revenue service, we’ve started doing sweeps when they reach stations at the end of the line. Furthermore, we’re improving lighting and replacing cracked station tiles.

Anyone who is plugged into social media on the Puget Sound Region will be familiar with the challenges that we have faced in maintaining operating vertical conveyances reliably for our passengers. Many of the lifts and escalators at our downtown stations are well beyond their functional life, and we have a long-term plan to replace them. In the meantime, our repair contractor responds within two hours to any reported outages. To help passengers to find vertical transportation more readily, we’re improving the signage design, signage positioning and delivery at stations, to create a simple and intuitive naming convention of vertical transportation.

Technology also plays a role in improving the passenger experience. In the coming years, we will be releasing a new digital assistant, with ongoing new features in both web and mobile applications that will help passengers with trip planning and provide real-time notifications. We are also launching an accessible navigation pilot, designed to offer passengers a fully accessible mobile application that enables them to navigate from a station entrance to a platform (and vice-versa), selecting the pathway that best suits their mobility needs.

These are just a preview of the efforts that we have underway to invest in a better experience for our passengers. Other transit systems will have different areas of focus, depending on their passengers’ needs. What matters most is not the individual initiatives, but rather the effort that we put into improving the experience that our riders are having. After a few bumpy years, we owe it to our passengers and ourselves to make riding transit the safe and seamless experience that we know it can be.