Ridership on LA Metro trains and buses reached 285 million boardings in 2023, almost a 12% increase from the year before, the transit agency reported on Monday, Feb. 12.
The number of people riding public transit last year was the highest since the pandemic, with overall ridership at 77% of pre-pandemic levels.
Metro attributed the jump to several factors, from more safety personnel riding with passengers and being present at train stations, to more leisure riders who use public transit to attend rock concerts, baseball, football and soccer games and other special events to avoid driving in traffic and paying to park.
During the pop singer Taylor Swift concerts from Aug. 3 through Aug. 9, 2023 at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, a rollout of shuttles, more frequent city buses and late-night rail lines running until 2 a.m. resulted in a 25% overall increase in ridership, Metro reported.
“Metro is making the system safer, more welcoming and accessible. The ridership numbers reflect that,” said Los Angeles Mayor and Metro Board Chair Karen Bass in a prepared statement.
Last year, LA Metro began adding safety personnel that consists of Metro Transit Security, private security, 325 Metro Ambassadors plus care teams that help the unhoused find shelter. Metro said its “layered public safety” template is providing a visible presence as well as directly addressing and preventing crime.
Incidents of trespassing, those who don’t pay their fare and sleep on the trains, and people who take illegal drugs on platforms and onboard moving trains and buses have dropped by 30% from 2022, the agency reported.
LA Metro’s Homeless riders who use the trains and buses as mobile shelters — something that has prevented some from riding the system according to surveys –– have been the emphasis of 24 multidisciplinary outreach teams. These teams have connected more than 650 people with housing solutions since July, LA Metro reported.
Train ridership grew from about 48 million in 2021 to almost 62 million in 2023 — an increase of 14 million riders and coming in at 67% of pre-pandemic levels. Train riders have been slow to come back, in part because many workers who once rode the trains to work are often working from home, at least part of the work week, according to studies.
Bus ridership — at 80% of the pre-pandemic ridership — reached 222.9 million riders in 2023. LA Metro reported that increase was in part due to re-establishing bus routes and frequencies to pre-pandemic levels in December 2022. In 2023, the agency added bus-only routes on La Brea Avenue and Venice Boulevard in Los Angeles.
New connections plus three new train stations in downtown LA were part of the Regional Connector that opened in June with reconfigured A and E Lines. Those seven months of operations of the A, E and L lines produced a combined 33.4% ridership increase in December 2023 over December 2022 on those three lines, the agency reported.