Hampton Roads bus ridership growth a stark contrast to declining trend nationwide

[spark317]

Hampton Roads bus ridership growth a stark contrast to declining trend nationwide

http://www.dailypress.com/news/hampt...,5759079.story

By Jon Cawley, jcawley@dailypress.com | 757-247-4635
9:17 p.m. EDT, April 19, 2011

While growth in bus ridership has fallen into negative figures nationwide, the increase in Hampton Roads Transit's ridership is notable.

Rob Case, a Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Organization engineer, recently cited figures from HRT and the Bureau of Transportation Statistics in a blog that showed how HRT's ridership growth has eclipsed the declining national trend. In the United States, bus ridership growth has declined by 2.1 percent over the past year and 1.4 percent over the last five years. Conversely, HRT's ridership — on all 70 routes throughout Hampton Roads — grew 1.1 percent in the past year and 5.7 percent since 2005, Case wrote.

The bus system is currently on track to end up with 16 million riders this year — about one million more than last — and is creeping up on the all-time high of 19 million riders the system had in 2001-2002 after services on the Peninsula and Southside merged...

[Jasonhouse]

Is bus ridership really declining? I know that here in Hillsborough County (Tampa), bus ridership has been consistently growing for several years in spite of fare increases. Ridership recently grew 14% YOY and surpassed a monthly avg of 40,000 daily riders for the first time. Metro bus ridership is now around 76,000 daily rides. http://madduxpress.com/2011/04/13/ma...p-record-23641

Anyways, just wondering if ridership is really going down everywhere as this article claims.