Ridership Up But Most Likely Going Down

The boosterism behind the data is a little behind the reality on the ground. As employment drops so will ridership this next year, but APTA says that ridership in 2008 was at a 52 year high. That isn't bad but when you look at the per capita numbers its a bit of a different story.

The total is refreshing though. After some dismal time in the mid 90's when gas was sometimes 75 cents a gallon or less, ridership has been steadily increasing again. I'm sure it helped that a lot more resources could be put into transit which shows that what you invest in will be what people will be able to use, other than the other way around that the opponents would like you to think was true. Mainly, no one uses it because everyone likes to drive. But they never tell you how much we weren't inevesting in transit all those years as much as we are now.

In 1995 7.76 billion people took transit. $17.8 billion was spent on operating costs ($23.40 inflation adjusted to 2006). Fast forward to 2006 where we've spent $32.03 Billion on transit operating and accrued 10.01 billion trips. If we look at the changes in spending, 36.8% operations cost adjusted for inflation and 28.9% ridership increase and 31% increase in passenger miles. The greater we invest, the more we'll see people taking the options that work for them.