FABB Blog

As Metro plans for the future, expecting ridership to increase from a current average of about 750,000 trips per day to more than 1 million, the question of how so many new passengers will access our system is a critical one.  Our most recent passenger survey estimates that about 39% of our riders arrive by car – either parking or being dropped off; 33% walk to our system; 22% take a bus; 4% by commuter rail and <1% arrive on bike.   Accommodating those new riders with the same modal split as we see today could be quite costly for the region.  Therefore, Metro decided to take a look at where we could improve our mode share for those modes that require fewer financial resources – namely bicycling and walking.  In 2009, we began a study that would provide a framework to help us achieve these higher shares.

Perhaps the most interesting recommendation is for Metro to adopt a bicycle mode share goal through which we can measure our progress as we implement these recommendations.  The recommendation is to triple the current bike share from .7% (about 1600 riders per day) to 2.1% by 2020 and quintuple it by 2030 – which equates to about 12,000 riders per day. In January we will discuss these goals with the Metro Board.