Nationwide transit ridership in August 2018 was 1.7 percent below the same month in 2017. Heavy rail dropped by 1.5 percent; light rail by 2.3 percent; buses by 1.9 percent; and streetcars by 11.2 percent, according to monthly data released last Friday by the Federal Transit Administration. Commuter rail gained 0.5 percent and hybrid rail gained 34.1 percent, mainly due to the opening of a new line of that type in Oakland.
Transit ridership had grown slightly in July, mainly because of depressed 2017 ridership due to New York City’s “summer of Hell” (meaning the partial closure of New York City’s Penn Station) and Washington DC’s “SafeTrack” program, both of which caused many transit delays. Although the Penn Station closures continued through August, 2017, the improved conditions in August 2018 weren’t enough to prevent New York urban area August ridership from declining by 0.5 percent.
August ridership declined in 36 of the nation’s top 50 urban areas. Ridership grew 27 percent in Houston, mainly because it had been depressed in August 2017 by Hurricane Harvey, which pretty much shut down the city for the last week of the month. It grew by a paltry 0.4 percent in Washington due to being depressed by the SafeTrack program in 2017. Continue reading
