Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 27, 2007
METRO TRANSIT ANNOUNCES JULY RIDERSHIP
-- 6 PERCENT HIGHER THAN JULY 2006 --
ST. PAUL – (Aug. 27) – Ridership on Metro Transit buses and trains last month was 6 percent higher than July 2006, the agency reported today to the transportation committee of the Metropolitan Council.
Customers used Metro Transit service 6.3 million times in July, nearly 356,000 more rides than the same month a year earlier.
“We recorded double-digit growth among customers holding Metropasses,” said General Manager Brian Lamb. “Metropass holders took nearly 564,000 rides last month, up 15.6 percent from a year earlier.” More than 160 companies are enrolled in the Metropass program under which employees are eligible for discounted annual transit passes. There are more than 27,000 Metropasses in use.
Lamb told the committee that ridership on express buses was flat for the month but that core urban local routes saw a growth of 6.3 percent. In fact more than 40 percent of the increase in bus ridership was recorded on Metro Transit’s High Frequency network. The Hi-Fi network, which debuted last year, includes all or portions of 12 routes on which service operates at least every 15 minutes.
Light-rail ridership was down 5.9 percent to 802,000 due to the nearly year-long closing of Humphrey Terminal Station for airport construction. In July, 137,600 rides between the two airport terminals, which would normally have been aboard light rail, instead were logged on a Metro Transit shuttle bus service. Humphrey Terminal Station will re-open to train service on Sept. 8.
For the first seven months of 2007, Metro Transit ridership reached 42.9 million, 4.7 percent, or 1.9 million rides, higher than the same period last year.
“We are well ahead of the pace we need to top our goal of 75 million rides this year,” Lamb told the committee. When it reaches 75 million rides, Metro Transit will have logged the highest annual ridership in 23 years.
Metro Transit is a service of the Metropolitan Council. Customers boarded Metro Transit’s buses and trains 73.4 million times last year.
-30-
(Editors: For information call Bob Gibbons, director of customer services, 612-349-7509 or via e-mail at robert.gibbons@metc.state.mn.us)
