Hop on the Bus

While public transportation (busses) is not an ACHD responsibility, I do sit on the Valley Ride Transit regional authority board, along with about 500 others - no actually, it's only about 30 or 35.

So I thought it might be of interest to air the increases in ridership that ValleyRide has seen from April-June 2009 over the same period in 2008.

First, the total ridership has increased 15.3% from 315,202 riders to 355,541 riders. That is quite an increase. And at the same time bus ridership has increase, vehicular traffic on our roads has decreased 9%.

In the first nine months of FY2009 (Oct-Sept), bus ridership exceeded 1,000,000, actually 1.08 million. This is up 20.6% over the same period 2008.

The Boise/Garden City fixed line ridership has gone up 21.7%.

Nampa/Caldwell to Boise fixed line ridership has gone up 27.3%.

Obviously the economy plays a great part in the increases since it is cheaper to leave the driving to someone else. Hopefully VRT can build on this even in the better times.