Transit ridership in Metro Vancouver smashed a new record in October, with more people riding transit than ever before.

There were 39.65 million boardings on transit last month. This includes bus, SkyTrain, HandyDART, SeaBus and West Coast Express. While ridership has been growing every month, we have never surpassed the stand-alone record of 39.2 million boardings in February 2010 when Vancouver welcomed the world for the Winter Olympics – until now!

“At TransLink, our focus is on delivering transit service improvements for our customers through the Mayors’ 10-Year Vision,” said TransLink CEO Kevin Desmond. “It’s great to see this kind of ridership growth, one sign that customers are responding to better transit service right across the region.”

• Bus: Average weekday boardings are up 10.5% year over year.
• SkyTrain: Expo and Millennium Line average weekday boardings are up 7.7% and average weekday boardings for Canada Line increased by 7.0% year-over-year.
• SeaBus: Average weekday boardings increased by 9.3% year-over-year.
• West Coast Express: Average weekday boardings are up 12.6% year-over-year.
• HandyDART: Average weekday boardings are up 9.1% year-over-year.

These numbers suggest that our investment to additional service – as part of Phase One of the 10-Year Vision – is driving growth. A spike in gas prices and strong employment are also additional factors that led to this increase in ridership.

This underscores the need for projects and service increases coming as part of Phase Two of the Mayors’ Council’s 10-Year Vision, which include:

• The Millennium Line Broadway Extension in Vancouver, and Rapid transit south of the Fraser
• New bus service in Vancouver, Surrey, and North Vancouver, as well as B-Lines in Richmond and Surrey.
• Addition of new buses and SkyTrain cars to increase frequency and capacity.

In October:

• Bus ridership (24.45m boardings) was the highest ever.
• West Coast Express (.24m boardings) had its biggest month since October 2014.
• Expo/Millennium line surpassed 10m boardings for the first time.

More and more customers are taking advantage of transit and new service introduced as part of the 10-Year Vision. Transit ridership in our region has hit record heights over the past two years. In 2017, ridership was over 407 million boardings, a 5.7% increase over 2016 and the largest growth of any major city in Canada and the United States.

We have more station upgrades and improvements around the transit system planned in 2019! What are the changes you’re most excited about? Let us know in the comments!

Author: Chris Bryan and Tanushree Pillai