Guelph transit ridership could remain below pre-pandemic levels for several years as a reduced number of riders currently places the monthly ridership down roughly 40 to 50 per cent.
Guelph Transit general manager Robin Gerus said in his opinion it could take upwards of three to five years for the ridership to resume to levels seen before COVID-19 wrecked havoc on the ridership.
“Some of these struggles are probably here for a long time,” said Gerus.
Data from Guelph Transit shows ridership more than halved due to the pandemic with a ridership of 3,409,311 reported in 2020 compared to the 7,201,308 rides recorded in 2019.
Citing the hybrid style some businesses have adopted which see employers have their workers work in rotating shifts between the office and working from home, Gerus said he expects this and other patterns to emerge which will continue impacting the ridership levels.
Data provided from Guelph Transit’s automatic passenger counter, the device used to count passengers as they board the bus, shows ridership levels were spurred on when the University of Guelph students returned toward the end of summer.
Prior to the pandemic, Guelph Transit had monthly ridership just shy of 568,000, with January of 2020 boasting 719,538 riders.
That number plummeted in 2021 with January of this year seeing 184,228 rides, a decrease of 535,355.
Data shows the first three months of 2021 were well below 2020 numbers, with 1,268,724 fewer riders.
When the pandemic hit and shutdowns were abundant, the ridership in 2020 hit a low of 106,535 in April, rebounding slightly for the remainder of the year.
In 2021, the ridership began to increase, with thousands of more rides per month noted.
“Come 2021 ridership continued to stay low because everyone was staying at home, and then low and behold when we started making decisions about getting the university students back in, September turned out to be a pretty good month for us,” said Gerus.
The data shows a spike in September ridership, which correlates to the university students returning as Guelph Transit reported 317,824 monthly riders, an increase of 108,529 from September 2020.
As of Oct. 23, the monthly ridership has continued to increase with 34,510 more riders reporting compared to October 2020.
“Having the university come back on campus was a big positive for us, it helped us in regaining some of our ridership. As you can imagine when COVID came in and for the most part all of 2020 we had our ridership struggles where we had at some points 50 per cent to 70 per cent depending on the day,” said Gerus.
Gerus said that in speaking with his operators they have confirmed to him they are beginning to see increasing loads on the busses on a near-daily basis.
In 2020 Guelph Transit reported 3,490,311 riders, and as of data provided up to Oct. 23, Guelph Transit has seen 2,049,794 riders in 2021.
