The vigorous expansion of Sacramento's LRT system continued on Friday, 11 June 2004, with the opening of three new LRT stations on the Folsom extension in the suburb of Rancho Cordova, at Sunrise Boulevard, Olson Drive, and Zinfandel Drive (see map, below). The Sunrise station provides park & ride access, with 487 spaces. At a cost of approximately $89 million, the 2.8-mile (4.5-km) extension from Mather Field to Sunrise came to about $32 million per mile ($20 million per km).
[Sacramento Bee, 12 June 2004; photo of passengers at Sunrise station: RT; map adapted from Sacramento Bee map]

Next year, Regional Transit (RT), the area's public transport agency, plans to extend the line another 7.8 miles (12.6 km), all the way to Historic Folsom, with stops at Hazel Avenue, iron Point Drive, and Glenn Drive. The entire route from downtown Sacramento to Folsom is expected to attract more than 6,000 new rider-trips a day by the end of 2005
[Sacramento Bee, 12 June 2004]

Sacramento's 26.9-mile (43.4-km) LRT line , which links both the eastern and northeastern suburbs with downtown Sacramento, currently carries approximately 39,000 passengers on a typical weekday. There are 41 passenger-boarding stations in the system. All stations, except the 12th & I inbound station, have Senior/Disabled platforms accessed by ramps or lifts. Twenty stations offer bus transfer services and 13 stations have free park-and-ride lots with over 6,000 parking spaces.
[RT website July 2004]

Sacramento's LRT operations continue to provide a pre-eminently cost-effective service, particularly in comparison to RT's bus operations. According to the most recent (2002) Agency Profile of the Federal Transit Administration's National Transit Database (NTD), RT's regular line-haul buses were costing $0.80 per passenger-mile, and demand-response minibuses $4.62/p-m, in comparison to $0.52/p-m on the LRT system.
[Photo: Transit Rider]

NOTE: Some of the material in this report was adapted from information on RT's website.