Ridership

Senior citizens and children have contributed to an 11.5 percent increase in ridership on the Howard Area Transit Service during a 12-month period that ended in June, officials told the Public Transportation Board last night.From July 1998 through June, 287,858 people used the service, said Peter Hefler of the Corridor Transportation Corp. of Laurel, which manages the bus system for the county.Between July 1997 and June of last year, 258,169 passengers rode the bus system, Hefler said.He attributed most of the growth to senior citizens and children ages 6 to 11, who combined to increase ridership by 8,000 passengers.

In a bid to build ridership, the Mass Transit Administration will expand light rail service between Baltimore's Penn Station and Baltimore-Washington International Airport beginning tomorrow.Trains will run every 17 minutes, halving the time passengers must wait, MTA officials said."One of the keys to growing ridership in light rail is to make transit more convenient to our citizens," Gov. Parris N. Glendening said.The MTA has added 18 cars to its previous fleet of 35 cars in the past 18 months, enabling it to double service between the airport and train station to four trains per hour.

MULTI-CAR households are common in Howard County, where many affluent teen-agers take it for granted that they will have their own wheels before they leave high school. The emphasis of young and old on personal transportation ignores the pollution and infrastructure costs that result from having so many cars on the road. It also ignores what is becoming a viable alternative -- the bus.The growing dependability of bus service provided by Howard Area Transit Service and Connect-a-Ride is reflected in the increase in ridership.

The Howard Area Transit Service (HATS) West bus service -- '' operating since March from Lisbon to The Mall in Columbia -- may be cut if ridership on the five-days-a-week service does not improve.That warning emerged from Tuesday night's Howard County Public Transportation Board meeting. Three of the five members present suggested discontinuing the bus route, which is funded by the state's Mass Transit Administration (MTA).The bus service, which has 18 stops, has attracted only 230 riders -- paying $1 each -- since it began operating March 24, according to a report compiled by Corridor Transportation Corp.

Hoping to reduce air pollution and bolster use of public transportation, the state Mass Transit Administration will offer 50-cent bus and light rail fares in downtown Baltimore beginning this fall.The reduced fare will be limited to travel within a designated area downtown, but officials think it will be incentive enough to increase ridership when it starts in October. The regular fare is $1.35, which officials think is so high that it leads many people to use their cars."We would like to get some cars off the road, thereby reducing transportation emissions," said Michael Gibbs, manager of the Baltimore Department of Planning's transportation planning division.

The future of the Washington area's regional Metrobus system will be discussed by local and transit officials this week.Jurisdictions including Montgomery County have started bus service after complaining of the expense of Metrobus. Ridership declined 25 percent in this decade.Pub Date: 01/06/97

As transit riders gear up to pay higher fares and grapple with changing bus routes today, irate passengers such as Queen Wilson can say they went down fighting.Mrs. Wilson and hundreds of other Mass Transit Administration riders are facing the facts that letter-writing campaigns, protest marches and rallies couldn't reverse the MTA's decision to increase fares by 8 percent while shortening some bus routes.The cost-cutting measures, which MTA officials say will close the gap between revenues and expenses, have hit Mrs. Wilson particularly hard.

Ridership on the Baltimore area's bus, light rail and subway systems has risen more than 4 percent since March, when transit officials took the controversial step of raising fares and shortening some bus routes.Higher fares and more riders? The news defies an industry maxim that says, in essence, when you raise rates, you lose passengers."That definitely goes against the grain of what one would normally expect to happen after a fare increase," said Dennis M. Kouba, spokesman for the American Public Transit Association, an industry trade group in Washington.

HOW CAN THERE BE mass transit if the masses aren't taking the transit? That was the premise behind the rate and route restructuring plans announced by the Mass Transit Administration.To be sure, the agency has enjoyed a few high-profile successes in recent years: the inauguration of the light rail line that coincided with the opening of Oriole Park and the extension of the Metro system to Johns Hopkins Hospital that has added 3,000 new riders. But by and large, mass transit officials 'N recognize that they have enjoyed only modest increases in ridership while highway traffic counts and the duration of the workday rush hour in the Baltimore-Washington corridor keep ballooning.

Saudi PerfidySaudi Arabia's refusal to allow the Muslim terrorist involved in the Beirut massacre and the murder of Bob Stethem during the hijacking of a TWA plane to be arrested on its soil as they didn't want to offend their Islamic brethren shows how far Arab memory goes.Isn't it strange they were willing to antagonize these same Islamic brethren when their country was threatened by allowing U.S. servicemen to die defending it during the Persian Gulf War?These people should be allowed to fend for themselves in any future display of Arab dissension while we concentrate on developing nuclear power, freeing ourselves from dependence on Mideast oil.Let's face it -- buying allies is a poor investment, and Saudi Arabia can't compare to the local variety.

Transit cuts also affect MARC train ridership I read the story in The Sun "Transit riders fight bus cut," and I want to say that this situation also affects the MARC train ridership. The MTA is also cutting service of MARC trains into Harford and Cecil counties because of budget cuts. Like the bus service cutbacks, there are trains being cut and there will be no service the day after Christmas this year, and who knows what other cuts there will be next year. I agree with the comments in the article about the bus line cuts because the MARC trains have seen a 30 to 45 percent increase in ridership since the beginning of 2008.

As gasoline prices climb toward $4 a gallon, more commuters in Maryland are leaving their cars and trucks at home and hopping a bus or train to work. The Maryland Transit Administration will seek approval next week to expand service on its long-distance bus lines to accommodate a surge of new riders. The so-called "commuter" buses ferry workers to Washington from places as far-flung as Hagerstown, Kent Island and Ellicott City. The action comes at a time when ridership on almost all forms of transit - including subway, city bus and commuter rail - is up in Maryland and across the nation.

A long-sought commuter bus line from Mount Airy to the Washington metro area has shut down, barely one month after it started, because of abysmal ridership, an official of the Howard County motor coach company said. Eyre Bus Service Inc. of Glenelg began the twice-daily round-trip service last month, offering a $6 one-way trip by motor coach from the park-and-ride lot at Interstate 70 and Route 27. But it made its last run from Mount Airy on Friday, said Matthew T. Eyre, marketing and research coordinator.

NEW YORK - A shortfall in riders between Hoboken and Manhattan has left the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey paying $1.14 million a month in federal disaster funds to NY Waterway for a ferry service that operates at less than half capacity. Since March, the Weehawken company has been paid $551 per boat per hour to provide enough vessels, captains, deckhands, and other personnel to carry the 60,000 riders a day who used the PATH train routes that were destroyed when the World Trade Center collapsed, Port Authority and company officials said.

Sunday service on the Metro, which runs between Owings Mills and Johns Hopkins Hospital, may resume next fall with the promise of funding from Gov. Parris N. Glendening. Glendening has notified the Mass Transit Administration and community groups that his next budget will include money for Sunday service, which was eliminated eight years ago because of budget concerns and a lack of riders. If the General Assembly agrees, the Sunday service would be complemented by feeder buses taking people to and from the subway stops.

FOR GOOD reason, mass transit is transportation of last resort in the Baltimore area. But rising gas prices are making travelers take a second look at buses and rail. The Mass Transit Association has a chance here to snare some permanent users -- but only if it cleans up its act and delivers better service than regular riders endure. Last year, the Citizens Planning and Housing Association found serious flaws with MTA service -- dirty buses, drivers who don't announce stops, broken windows and seats, too little information about routes and schedules.

Senior citizens and children have contributed to an 11.5 percent increase in ridership on the Howard Area Transit Service during a 12-month period that ended in June, officials told the Public Transportation Board last night.From July 1998 through June, 287,858 people used the service, said Peter Hefler of the Corridor Transportation Corp. of Laurel, which manages the bus system for the county.Between July 1997 and June of last year, 258,169 passengers rode the bus system, Hefler said.He attributed most of the growth to senior citizens and children ages 6 to 11, who combined to increase ridership by 8,000 passengers.

In a bid to build ridership, the Mass Transit Administration will expand light rail service between Baltimore's Penn Station and Baltimore-Washington International Airport beginning tomorrow.Trains will run every 17 minutes, halving the time passengers must wait, MTA officials said."One of the keys to growing ridership in light rail is to make transit more convenient to our citizens," Gov. Parris N. Glendening said.The MTA has added 18 cars to its previous fleet of 35 cars in the past 18 months, enabling it to double service between the airport and train station to four trains per hour.

MULTI-CAR households are common in Howard County, where many affluent teen-agers take it for granted that they will have their own wheels before they leave high school. The emphasis of young and old on personal transportation ignores the pollution and infrastructure costs that result from having so many cars on the road. It also ignores what is becoming a viable alternative -- the bus.The growing dependability of bus service provided by Howard Area Transit Service and Connect-a-Ride is reflected in the increase in ridership.

The Howard Area Transit Service (HATS) West bus service -- '' operating since March from Lisbon to The Mall in Columbia -- may be cut if ridership on the five-days-a-week service does not improve.That warning emerged from Tuesday night's Howard County Public Transportation Board meeting. Three of the five members present suggested discontinuing the bus route, which is funded by the state's Mass Transit Administration (MTA).The bus service, which has 18 stops, has attracted only 230 riders -- paying $1 each -- since it began operating March 24, according to a report compiled by Corridor Transportation Corp.