Despite a growing population and a booming economy, the number of trips taken on Los Angeles County’s bus and rail network last year fell to the lowest level in more than a decade.
A passenger is seen on a Metro bus in 2017. Ridership on the agency’s buses and trains has declined 15 percent over the last five years, with the sharpest drop coming on the agency’s buses. (Credit: Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
Passengers on Metropolitan Transportation Authority buses and trains took 397.4 million trips in 2017, a decline of 15% over five years. Metro’s workhorse bus system, which carries about three-quarters of the system’s passengers, has seen a drop of nearly 20%.
Experts and officials have no firm answers, but have attributed the decline to a combination of factors, including changes to immigration policy, competition from Uber and Lyft and more people buying cars — as well as problems with existing transit service.
Nearly two-thirds of former Metro riders told the agency in a survey in 2016 that they stopped riding because bus service was inefficient, inconvenient or difficult to reach. The vast majority of those people now drive alone.
from KTLA http://ift.tt/2G9RGYO
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