Waiting for trains to boost sales

THE RIGHT TRACK? Passengers exit a MBTA train at Wickford Junction earlier this month. Currently, there are 10 round trips a day to the station. / PBN PHOTO/BRIAN MCDONALD
THE RIGHT TRACK? Passengers exit a MBTA train at Wickford Junction earlier this month. Currently, there are 10 round trips a day to the station. / PBN PHOTO/BRIAN MCDONALD

Businesses at the Wickford Junction shopping center in North Kingstown hoping for a customer boost from commuters using the new $44 million train station next door will have to be patient.
Roughly two months since Mass. Bay Transportation Authority trains started rolling into Wickford Junction, ridership is modest, although growing, prompting a glass-half-full reaction from station neighbors and proponents.
“We are kind of excited because there appears to be more traffic, but as far as the shopping center is concerned, it has not shown in sales,” said Robert A. Cioe, the developer at the center of the Wickford Junction station concept and owner of the shopping center. “The summer is typically a tough time because we’re not quite close enough to the beach, so it is usually a little slow.”
During May, the first full month of MBTA service to North Kingstown, an average of 119 riders used the train each day.
Over the first two weeks of June, that daily average crept up to 139 riders per day, an improvement, but still a long way from the 1,500 commuters DOT officials estimated will use the station daily by 2020.
Based on their experience at other new MBTA stations, state transportation offices said use of Wickford Junction had “exceeded expectations.”
“The [R.I. Department of Transportation] didn’t anticipate full ridership on the first day and it’s going to take some time to build that number up,” said DOT spokesman Bryan Lucier. “The ridership at T.F. Green and Wickford Junction has exceeded DOT’s expectations at this early stage of the service. It is important to look at the long-term projections.”
As a precedent, RIDOT points to the Providence train station, which was drawing about 200 riders per day when trains first started running in 1988, but is now up to about 2,000 per day.
From the MBTA’s perspective, one of the attractive aspects of expanding train service south into Rhode Island is the prospect of capturing commuters headed to Providence, allowing the railroad to effectively fill each train to or from Boston twice.
But in the early returns from passengers using the Wickford Junction station, an overwhelming majority of South County riders are using the train to go all the way to Boston, suggesting the weakness in the Providence economy is holding ridership back. According to a Cioe Cos. survey of riders getting on at Wickford Junction, 68 percent said their destination was Boston versus only 22 percent going to Providence.
Only 56 percent of riders said they were getting on the train for work and 17 percent said they were being dropped off at the station, as opposed to parking and riding, Robert Cioe said.
“The problem is there is over 1 million square feet of vacant office space in Providence,” Cioe said. “I think the number we have is a positive number, and you will see a positive impact once the Rhode Island economy turns around and you have more people going to Providence.”
Part of the plan to grow ridership from South County is to eventually increase the number of trains running south of Providence. Right now there are 10 round trips each day to Wickford Junction.
Another way is to build the commuter base in the vicinity of the train station itself by further developing the 450,000 square-foot, Walmart-anchored Wickford Junction complex.
The area was rezoned to allow mixed-use residential, and Cioe said his intention is to build apartments, as well as additional retail, at Wickford Junction when market conditions improve. The Wickford Junction Walmart plans to expand this year.
Roughly 15 miles to the north in Warwick, state and local leaders have their sights set on a much larger scale of development around the Interlink train station at T.F. Green Airport.
A year and a half since MBTA trains started pulling into the Interlink station, T.F. Green ridership continues to creep up slowly, from a daily average of 158 riders in December of last year, to 155 riders in January, 167 riders in February and 162 riders in March. During the first two weeks in April, the daily average was 178 riders, with 195 getting off at the Interlink and 161 riders leaving from the Interlink.
DOT said it did not have any more current ridership numbers for T.F. Green (the agency is getting special weekly updates from the MBTA on Wickford) and multiple calls to the MBTA were not returned.
Ridership at T.F. Green has roughly doubled from 2011, attributable in large part to the doubling of trains running to Warwick last fall. Even more so than at Wickford Junction, T.F. Green is counting on substantial development of the surrounding land, some 95 acres on either side of the station known as the Warwick Station District, to boost utilization of rail and commercial air travel.
At the end of June, Rhode Island officials showed seven scouts from national corporate relocation consulting firms around T.F. Green and the Interlink, to plant the seed of a move to Warwick in their minds.
“Each scout came with a different niche and listed all the places the clients they represent need to be able to get to nonstop,” said Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian about the tour. “Then we would turn to them and say we have ‘x’ amount of hotel rooms, the cost is half per square foot what it is in other metro areas and you can walk from the neighborhood to the single terminal.”
The R.I. Economic Development Corporation said two consultants came from New York, two from North Carolina, and one each from New Jersey, Connecticut and Minnesota.
State and city officials have been in talks with a number of companies interested in moving to the Station District, Avedisian said, adding that he expects someone to commit to the area “soon.”
Corporate development at Warwick Station could also help fill up the mostly empty Interlink parking garage.
During the first three weeks of June, an average of 80 cars per weekday used the Interlink garage.
That’s an increase from last June, when an estimated 55 vehicles per day were using the garage.
The Interlink garage has a capacity of 650 parking spaces, meaning that approximately 88 percent of the garage is empty on most weekdays and even emptier on weekends, when there are no commuter trains.
In its second full month since opening, the Wickford Junction parking garage, which can hold 1,000 cars, is seeing similar usage, Cioe said, citing counts of 84 vehicles in the garage on the last Thursday in June and 79 vehicles the day after that.
Cioe said as long as ridership continues to increase, he will wait and do another survey in the early fall and then consider a marketing campaign.
“At the airport it took almost a year to [get to] 100 riders and we are there already,” Cioe said. •

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