Metrorail ridership tumbled 5.6 percent on the first workday under a major fare increase, but the the transit agency says the higher fares may not be to blame.
The transit agency clocked 698,093 trips on the rail system Monday, down from 736,935 on a similar day last year, said Metro spokesman Reggie Woodruff.
Rail riders did run into some problems on Monday that could have affected their trips — or even dissuaded some from taking Metro.The Forest Glen station was shut down for part of the day after a power outage to its elevators, and a suicide at Grosvenor tied up Red Line service for more than three hours during the evening commute.
But the agency isn’t ready to blame the drop on the delays or the fare hike. “So many different factors come into play,” Woodruff said. However, he said, the nearly 40,000-trip drop is consistent with reduced ridership on the system overall in the past year.
The next question will be how ridership plays out and what impact any reductions have on transit revenue, as the fare increase enacted Sunday was intended to help Metro raise an additional $108 million in the coming budget.
The agency ran into problems on that front in the annual budget that ends Wednesday because ridership fell short of expectations for the entire year, forcing Metro to charge 10 cents extra per trip.
That emergency measure, though, didn’t save Metro from falling short an estimated $25 million. The transit agency emptied its reserve funds to help cover some of the gap and pushed off the rest to the next fiscal year, so any new shortfalls could hit hard.
