A couple of stories were in the news yesterday about how our transit ridership is sky high for the Games.

The Province had an article about our Tuesday ridership, when all venues had Olympic events on.

Transit use this week hasn’t topped the estimated 1.5 million rides that were taken Sunday, but the system is entering a peak period that will likely continue through to next week, according to TransLink’s John Beaudoin.

Tuesday’s busy Olympic schedule resulted in about 900,000 bus trips, compared to the typical daily total of 750,000 to 800,000.

Ridership on the Expo and Millennium SkyTrain lines was up about 30 per cent to between 320,000 and 330,000 from the typical 250,000.

The Canada Line was getting 100,000 riders, but on Tuesday there were in excess of 220,000 riders.

And Frances Bula wrote an article in the Globe and Mail about last weekend’s ridership.

On Sunday – a day on which no one expected a surge – more than 1.5 million people used the system, with volumes up anywhere from 25 per cent to more than 100 per cent on different lines. That includes 700,000 riders for the day on Expo, Millennium and Canada lines, more than 800,000 on the buses, and 40,000 on the Seabus.

Numbers haven’t been crunched yet for Day 5, which had three hockey games and a victory ceremony, but they’re expected to be higher.