New SkyTrain line pushes ridership numbers close to all-time high

NEW WESTMINSTER (NEWS 1130) – About 45,000 people took at least one trip on the Evergreen Line on the first five days it was open to the public, while TransLink reports ridership is approaching an all-time high across the whole system. That’s bound to make things more crowded for a couple of years.

The latest update shows transit ridership trending up by four per cent through the fall. 2016 is on track to end with the highest number of transit users ever recorded.

More trains are on order thanks to phase one funding for the Metro Vancouver Mayors’ Council‘s ten-year transportation plan. The problem is they won’t arrive until 2018 at the earliest according to TransLink CEO Kevin Desmond. “It does put us in a position to buy more fleet and if all goes well, that fleet will be here by late 2018/2019. So we’ve got about two-plus years where we’re going to have to manage the system capacity with the fleet we have on Expo and Millennium. So we’re going to look at it as carefully as we can, but if you move cars from Expo to Millennium or you modify frequencies and capacity on one line, it’s going to come at the expense of the other line.”

Desmond says this may mean you’ll have to wait for a train or two at peak times. He says they aim to have trains coming every two minutes during the busiest hours.

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