May 25, 2016
Annual Report Shows Strength of Trunk Routes
ALBANY, N.Y. (May 25, 2016) The Capital District Transportation Authority (CDTA) released its annual Route Performance Report at their monthly Board Meeting. The report, which covers Fiscal Year 2016, focuses on ridership and productivity trends, while looking at service changes and route recommendations for the year ahead.
The report shows that trunk routes continue to perform well above productivity standards that are outlined in the company’s Transit Development Plan (TDP). For the third consecutive year, CDTA set an all-time ridership record of 17.1 million boardings and has now seen ridership increases during each of the past five years. Ridership is up across most service categories, with trunk routes showing the most gains. Trunk routes operate along the regions busiest corridors, like Route 5 between Albany and Schenectady, Western Avenue, Washington Avenue, Route 32 between Albany and Troy, Route 2 between Troy, Latham and Schenectady and Route 9 between Cohoes, Latham and Albany.
Customer demand for more service and the growth and popularity of Universal Access partnerships with colleges and major employers, which has doubled ridership from two million to four million, have been key factors in CDTA’s sustained ridership growth. The largest increases came from trunk routes, which provide the most frequency and duration of all buses. Several neighborhood routes are also seeing increases larger than the standards called for in the classification report. BusPlus is closing in on 2 million boardings annually while the top four routes in the system all serve more than 1 million riders each year.
The top performing routes system-wide:
Route #905 Bus Plus (Red Line) Albany-Schenectady, 1.9 million rides
Route #12 Washington Avenue, 1.7 million rides
Route # 1 Central Avenue/Wolf Road, 1.3 million rides
Route # 22 Albany-Troy-Watervliet, 1.2 million rides
Looking ahead, CDTA will focus on enhancing productive routes by reallocating service to areas with most demand, while lower performing routes will be assessed. The report addresses needs to support the expansion of BusPlus on new corridors, construction of the Uncle Sam Transit Center in Troy and development of a new Washington and Lark BusPlus station.
You can view the full report and past reports at http://www.cdta.org/annual-route-performance-report/18.
The CDTA Board of Directors meets on the last Wednesday of every month at the CDTA Headquarters. Board meetings are open to the public and streamed live at www.cdta.org