TransLink transit ridership and on-time performance in 2019

TransLink staff presented their 2019 Year-End Financial and Performance Report at the most recent TransLink open board meeting.

I thought I would create a few charts based on some of the key statistics from that report. The charts are interactive, so you can hover over the lines and datapoints to get more detailed information.

The legend for the charts is as follows:

• Bus
• Expo & Millennium Lines
• Canada Line
• West Coast Express

TransLink has seen steady growth in ridership between 2015 and the end of 2019. Even the West Coast Express has seen its ridership climb back up since the introduction of the SkyTrain Evergreen Extension. It is likely that ridership will be lower in 2020 due to COVID-19.

While rail-based transit has excellent on-time performance, buses do not. This is because buses get stuck in congestion. As congestion increases, bus on-time performance decreases. This is why TransLink has introduced the RapidBus program which includes measures such as bus-only lanes to get buses out of congestion.

TransLink’s definition of on-time for buses is no greater than 1 minute early or three minutes late. For SkyTrain it is +/- 3 minutes within schedule. For the West Coast Express, it is +/- 5 minutes within schedule. On-time statistics are not publicly available for the Canada Line.