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The West Coast Express not on track for ridership recovery due to rise in remote workers

Train still seeing only 40% of its pre-pandemic ridership
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TransLink reports that the West Coast Express has the capacity for more than 6,000 people a day, yet continues to only see an average of 4,400 daily riders. (The News)

While TransLink ridership is recovering quite quickly, there is one branch of TransLink that continues to struggle to get anywhere near pre-pandemic numbers.

The West Coast Express (WCE), which travels from Mission to downtown Vancouver, is seeing a much slower recovery rate in its number of daily riders.

READ MORE: Pandemic derailed West Coast Express ridership

Thor Diakow, senior media relations advisor for TransLink, said that the average number of people who rode the WCE in the fall was 4,400 per weekday. Compared to the fall of 2019, which averaged 10,900 riders per weekday, this is a drop of 60 per cent in ridership.

Meanwhile, the rest of TransLink’s transportation network has already returned to nearly 80 per cent of its pre-pandemic numbers.

Contributing to these disparaging statistics is the fact that the number of daily WCE trains was cut from five down to three during the pandemic. Even now, there are still only four WCE trains running per day.

For Coquitlam Central Station riders, this means there are no departures between 6:10 a.m. and 7:10 a.m., with every one of the eight stations being left with an hour-long gap in departures in both the morning and the evening commutes.

This is especially significant for the WCE, which Diakow explained relies heavily on workers travelling to and from Vancouver.

“Ridership on the WCE has recovered slower from the COVID-19 pandemic than other modes because its ridership depends heavily on office workers in Downtown Vancouver,” said Diakow.

“The service is oriented towards commuters in the Central Business District of Vancouver – many of whom are still working from home due to rising trends in remote working policies.”

RELATED: TransLink aims to expand rapid bus service, active transport in next 10 years

However, Diakow said it’s not all bad news when it comes to the WCE, and as of recently, its recovery has been quite significant.

For most of 2022, the WCE averaged between 7 million and 8 million boardings per month, which Diakow said is a 55 per cent increase from the fall of 2021.

“Based on our data, Mission City, Port Haney, and Pitt Meadows stations have recovered the most since 2019,” he said. “We’ve seen the WCE ridership consistently rebound since the onset of the pandemic.”

In terms of finding solutions to this low ridership though, TransLink did not identify a specific plan.

“We’ll continue monitoring and adjusting service as required,” said Diakow.


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Brandon Tucker

About the Author: Brandon Tucker

I have been a journalist since 2013, with much of my career spent covering sports and entertainment stories in Alberta.
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