Wednesday, November 20, 2013

OC Transpo ridership down again, three-year lows expected for 2013

As reported in the Citizen and Sun last week, OC Transpo's ridership are down yet again for the third quarter of 2013. From the Citizen's coverage:
"According to newly released figures for July, August and September, OC Transpo gave 21.1 million rides in those months, down 3.9 per cent from the year before."
OC Transpo continues to place the blame on job cuts in the federal public service, although that seems like it's just their best guess--there are likely other factors that could be at play, including the introduction of Presto cards, the phasing out of EcoPasses, recent and continuing increases in bus fares, and construction-related transit delays.

The continued ridership decline means that OC Transpo is expecting to fall below 100 million rides for 2013, despite exceeding that number in 2012 (101 million) and 2011 (103.5 million). It's unclear at this point whether ridership will even match numbers from 2010 (99.3 million), which could mean this year will be the worst for OC Transpo since the 2008-09 winter transit strike.

No one wants to talk about that thing again...

3 comments:

Betsy said...

Seems like a very convenient excuse to me. Here's why I walked home instead of riding today: I had less than $2.72 on my pesto card and didn't want to use my emergency tickets on a nice day.

Anonymous said...

I'd take busses but i can bike faster even though work is quite far. the schedules and routes are terrible.
my wife does use the bus but says they are overcrowded, often don't show up, they often stop at every street corner, and the schedules are terrible.
She can actually walk as fast from her work which is about 45 minutes away (should be "bussable" in 20 !!). She is very motivated to bike or walk.
If you offer terrible service, at prices that are double or triple what most cities offer, don't expect people to use the service.
This is another example of Watson wasting our money on useless projects and not providing for the basic services.

Anonymous said...

"The lower 2012 annual system ridership was evidenced by fare revenue being under budget"(Annual Performance Report). The revenue/cost ratio was 52% in 2011 and lowered to 51% in 2012.The CBC reported ridership down 4% Feb 2013 but The Citizen reported 2.1% decrease. Deans however was quoted saying, "revenue hasn't been effected due to drop in ridership". Obviously, the method(s) used are skewed!