Every quarter, the American Public Transit Association releases ridership statistics about transit agencies in North America. I was looking over the third quarter results for TransLink and was pleasantly surprised with the huge increase in bus ridership. Between 1999 and 2004 (with the exception of 2001 due to the transit strike), TransLink saw strong and sometimes double-digit growth in bus ridership. Between 2005 and 2011, TransLink saw modest or no growth in ridership in the bus network. The majority of ridership growth came from SkyTrain with 2010 being the strongest year.
While SkyTrain growth year-to-quarter has been a modest 1.2%, bus ridership has soared by 7.5% this year. Maybe all the service optimization that TransLink is doing is working or something else is at play? It will be exciting to see the year-end results for TransLink, but it is great to see that our bus service is being more productive. I wonder how much more productive it could be if TransLink was properly funded.
No comments:
Post a Comment