during weekday rush hours, operating on headways as short as five minutes. During the early mornings and late evenings, headways increase to 30 minutes. Ridership During the Eastside MAX's construction, the line was projected to carry 12,000 riders per day. It averaged around 22,000 during its first four days of regular operation and had leveled at 18,000 by December 1986. In June 1987, TriMet's general manager, James Cowen, claimed MAX ridership had grown to a point where it was "a peak all day" with a farebox recovery ratio of 50 percent. Two years after the opening of the Westside MAX, the system had been recording over 71,000 daily riders, a figure that was not anticipated until 2005. To relieve overcrowding, TriMet extended the Red Line further west to Beaverton Transit Center on August 31, 2003. From 2004 to 2007, TriMet recorded 18 percent and 27 percent increases in utilization between Hatfield Government Center station and Beaverton Transit Center during morning and evening rush hours, respectively, prompting the agency to add three Red Line trains running up to Hatfield Government Center on March 2, 2008. In the first three months of 2017, the Blue Line recorded an average 55,233 rides per weekday, a drop of 2.9 percent from the same period in 2016. TriMet attributes the drop to lower-income riders being forced out of the inner city by rising housing prices. The Blue Line is currently the busiest line in the MAX system, carrying 18.9 million passengers in 2015. It averaged 55,370 riders on weekdays in September 2018, up from 55,330 for the same month in 2017. Notes References Sources External links Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) documentation, filed under Beaverton, Washington County, OR: 1986 establishments in Oregon Historic American Engineering Record in Oregon Blue Line Rail lines in Oregon Railway lines opened in 1986