Despite the contract provisions, there were a couple of major issues that negatively affected the project at the onset. The most significant problem BTS faced was the inaccurate ridership forecast. When BTS began operations in December 1999, the actual ridership was not even a third of the forecasted 650,000; by 2007, ridership had only increased to 380,000 riders per day (58 percent of the projection).36 This inaccurate forecast led to several major financial problems for the BTS and almost resulted in the collapse of BTSC.
This was the result of having only one of the private companies involved in BTSC projecting the ridership forecast. Impartial due diligence could have been put in place to allow for better financial assessment of the project, especially for the forecasting of ridership as many aspects of the project were reliant on this forecast. For example, BTSC is to recoup its costs from the revenue generated through the operations of the BTS, and this revenue forecast was based on the projected ridership numbers. Also, the entire debt structure was designed based on the ridership forecast.36