Staggering Plunge In Metro Ridership: Report

An alarming new chart making the rounds shows just how far Metro has fallen in the last couple years, and the worst could be yet to come.

WMATA's Finance Committee will meet this week to discuss the decline in Metro ridership, nearly a third of which is due to declining performance.

The above chart shows Metro ridership taking a steep plunge right around the time a 61-year-old woman died in January 2015 after she was trapped in a train that was filling with smoke near the L'Enfant Metro station.

There are other worrying signs for WMATA: average trip frequency has declined from 20 to 18 trips per card per month, with more people opting to telework. Rail-related bus ridership is falling as a result, according to the report.

In a slide titled "Marketing & Communications Efforts to Promote Ridership," Metro listed the following bullet point as the top priority: "Focus on 30% of riders who left because of service reliability issues."

That will be a challenge for Metro, which continues to deal with smoke and fire issues despite a year and a half of SafeTrack, which was supposed to fix chronic problems throughout the system. Now, officials are saying they need more money to fix Metro.

In addition, Metro is proposing to encourage off-peak rail ridership through partnerships; to strengthen the SmartBenefits program and regional employer relationships; and to promote pass products, automatic reload, and other fare products.

Adds the report: "These efforts will continue in the coming months as we hope to see sustained improvements, such as the reduction in passenger offloads and improvements in customer on-time performance; however, we realize that it will take some time to regain the trust and confidence of customers needed to return to the system."

Image via WMATA