Last modified: Friday, October 5, 2007
Bus operators set ridership records
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Oct. 5, 2007
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- IU's Campus Bus Service and Bloomington Transit (BT) are having another record year as ridership continues to grow.
Last year, both systems set ridership records, and both are well on their way to establishing new records this year. During the last complete fiscal year, BT provided 2,363,526 passenger trips and Campus Bus provided 3,051,846 passenger trips. So far this year, ridership for both systems is up about 7 percent.
"This is a really significant accomplishment, especially when you look at the combined total and put it into context with the rest of Indiana," said Kent McDaniel, executive director of IU Transportation Services. "Only Indianapolis, with its much larger fleet and population base, carries more passengers per year than Bloomington. No other city, with the exception of Lafayette combined with West Lafayette, is even close. On a typical weekday, we provide a combined average of about 37,000 trips. We had one day this year when we almost had 41,000 in a single day."
BT has already set ridership records for an individual day at 15,670 on Aug. 28, for a single week at 78,512 on the first week of the fall semester, and for a single month at 306,740 in September.
"It is not just the individual records. The growth is sustained. Before this year, our old record for a single day was 15,070," said Lew May, general manager of BT. "This semester, we've already had nine different days when we carried over 15,000 passengers."
IU Campus Bus set a new one-day ridership total of 25,912 passengers on Sept. 5. This record eclipsed last year's record of 22,979, which was set on Feb. 7 the same year.
"The increased ridership can be attributed to intense IU student involvement in Campus Bus over the past year," said Perry Maull, operations manager for IU Campus Bus Service. "The IU Student Transportation Advisory Committee worked very hard to implement a new route (U Route), bring back an old route (D Route), rationalize campus bus stops, and in general, to better connect Campus Bus with the IU Student Body."
