We have some very good ridership news to share now that our most recent numbers are available: we had more than one million average weekday boardings in September for the first time since the pandemic! Specifically, we had 1,023,399 average weekday boardings last month.
A few highlights:
•September was our 22nd consecutive month of year-over-year ridership gains.
•Average weekday bus ridership in September was more than 800,000 — the first time we surpassed 800K since the pandemic.
•Our combined bus and rail ridership in September was 86.4% of September 2019 ridership prior to pandemic.
•Across the U.S. transit agencies are averaging about 76% of what their ridership was pre-pandemic.
•In September, our weekend rail ridership reached 99.4% of pre-pandemic levels. Weekends continue to show strong numbers with more riders using Metro to reach events and leisure activities.
•Our GoPass — which provides a free transit pass to K-14 students at participating schools — had 1.66 million boardings in September. That’s a 3% increase over Sept. ‘23. For more info on GoPass, visit metro.net/riding/fares/gopass/
Of course, closely related to the topic of ridership is the ongoing work we’re doing to improve public safety on our system. Specifically:
•We’ve increased the number of uniformed personnel on the system, made a variety of station upgrades and taken measures to improve safety on buses.
•We’re working to ensure our system is being used only for its intended purpose of transit through fare gate improvements and removal of trespassers.
•We’re partnering with L.A. County, local cities and other regional agencies to address societal issues such as homelessness, untreated mental illness and drug addiction that are impacting our system and riders.
•Metro Ambassadors are deployed on Metro’s six rail lines and five of our busiest bus lines to provide support to customers and identify problems.
Thank you to everyone for riding and supporting public transit. Your ridership helps us get the resources we need and helps our region battle traffic and smog! We very much appreciate your business as we work to improve each and every day.
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Now lets get some services back to pre pandemic levels.. running the rail system to 3am on weekends again perhaps?
No thanks, maybe force the state to allow bars to stay open until 4 to 6am instead. That way anyone clearly to intoxicated to be out will likely be more sober up by then. New York is a terrible example of 24 hour rail service.
But at the same time, Metro should actually be doing a better job at actually cleaning the system overnight. Why is there visible trash on the subway tunnels at 6am says a LOT about the state of maintenance in the system.
On the note of ensuring the system is only used for its intended purpose, any update on the pilot of tall fare gates? They have had a lot of success in improving security in other metros.
On my recent E line trip, police and security were at the Downtown Santa Monica station but weren’t doing anything to enforce the new “tap out” policy. Several people slipped through the gates right in front of them. Overall though, the system seemed cleaner and more secure than in the past.
Ok, great! Now put the late night service back on the rails. Its expensive to Uber/Lyft from downtown to the valley at 2am. The prices surge at that time.