CDTA bus ridership down since fare increase

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Overall ridership on Capital District Transportation Authority buses continues to be down since last spring’s fare increase, but it is steady on the transit system’s most popular routes, CDTA officials said this week.

Going into the future, new CDTA Executive Director Carm Basile said, the mass transit authority should be increasing service on the “trunk” routes that see the most riders to try to get ridership growing again.

“Our focus will be on what we can do, not what we can’t do,” he said.

Basile said an analysis of the ridership decline since the 50-cent fare increase took place in April shows the less-used routes have lost the most riders.

“The five highest-volume routes in our system are showing no decrease, so there’s reason for optimism,” Basile said.

All those high-volume routes are links between downtown Albany and elsewhere. They are: Route 5 service to Schenectady; Central Avenue service to Wolf Road; Western Avenue service to Crossgates Mall; Washington Avenue service to the University at Albany and Crossgates; and service to Troy via Watervliet.

The CDTA, which serves Albany, Schenectady, Saratoga and Rensselaer counties, has 12 to 15 high-volume trunk routes, which Basile defined as those that run seven days a week, with long hours and a high frequency of buses.

“Frequency is where we need to make improvements,” Basile said. “I’ve said, if you build it, they will ride.”

He said increases in the frequency of buses on Route 50 between Schenectady and Saratoga boosted ridership from 6,000 riders in 2005 to about 250,000 last year.

Overall, however, system ridership is down 11 percent in the six months since the basic fare rose from $1 to $1.50, and isn’t recovering from the initial drop. The total number of passengers from January through August has dropped from 6.3 million last year to 5.6 million this year.

The fare increase and also cuts CDTA made in its less-used bus routes were part of the authority’s efforts to close a multimillion-dollar budget gap.

CDTA officials said increasing unemployment and decreasing gasoline prices over the past year may be factors in the decline of bus ridership, but not as much as the higher cost of taking the bus.

“The fare increase has had a significant impact on ridership and is the primary cause for the decline,” said Denise Figueroa, chairwoman of CDTA’s planning and resource development committee.

Basile said the sale of prepaid swiper cards has been relatively level, but the number of people putting cash in the fare box is off — an indication that regular transit commuters are still using the bus, but there are fewer single trips.

CDTA board Chairman David Stackrow said it appears that the people who need bus service the most, those without other regular transportation, are the ones who are being lost over the last six months.

“It wasn’t the intention to cut out people who depend the most on us,” he said.

Stackrow said the authority is putting together a request to state lawmakers for additional state aid, making the argument that people who depend on mass transit to get around are being hurt by higher fares.

Basile, a long-time CDTA administrator, was named the organization’s new executive director Wednesday. He succeeds Ray Melleady.