Ridership Soars During Spare the Air/Free Transit Campaign

Transit Operators Report 23 Percent Increase Over Baseline Levels

OAKLAND, CA — Transit ridership rose by 23 percent over baseline levels on the two Spare the Air days of 2007, Wednesday, Aug. 29 and Thursday, Aug. 30, the highest increase in ridership since free transit was offered as part of the Spare the Air campaign in 2004. Almost 330,000 additional riders per day took transit on the Spare the Air days. In 2006, there was a 15 percent increase in ridership when 225,000 additional passengers per day took transit.

The Spare the Air/Free Transit Campaign of 2007 that began on June 1 ended Friday, Oct. 12 th. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (Air District) partnered with 29 transit operators during the 2007 campaign to offer free transit on the first four, non-holiday Spare the Air weekdays of the summertime smog season.

“Free transit on Spare the Air days shows us that many more Bay Area residents can take transit, and that they care about clean air,” said Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty, vice chair of MTC. “The challenge is for the new or occasional riders to continue taking transit on a regular basis to reduce air pollution and greenhouse gases every day,” Haggerty said.

For the 2007 campaign, transit was free all day on Bay Area buses and light rail. On BART, Caltrain, ACE trains and Bay Area ferries, transit was free until 1 p.m. Spare the Air days are declared by the Air District when unhealthy levels of air pollution are predicted in the Bay Area, typically on hot, stagnant days when oxides of nitrogen and reactive organic compounds react in the presence of strong sunlight to form ground-level ozone or smog.

MUNI experienced the highest ridership gain on the two Spare the Air days, with over 200,000 additional riders each day, an increase of 35 percent over comparable weekdays. Other substantial ridership gains include:

AC Transit with 62,000 additional riders per day (up 27 percent)
VTA buses with 22,000 additional riders per day (up 26 percent)
VTA light-rail with over 12,000 additional riders per day (up 41 percent)
BART with 5,000 additional riders per day (up one percent)
Vallejo Transit with 4,300 additional riders per day (up 66 percent)
Caltrain with 4,600 additional riders per day (up 19 percent),
TriDelta Transit with over 2,000 additional riders per day (up 33 percent)
SamTrans with 3,700 additional riders per day (up 7 percent)
Alameda-Oakland and Alameda Harbor Bay Ferries with 1,550 additional riders per day (up 89 percent)
Golden Gate Sausalito Ferry with almost 1,000 additional riders per day (up 53 percent)

The goals of the 2007 Spare the Air/Free Transit program were to increase awareness of the link between transportation choices and air quality, build transit ridership regionwide, prevent exceedances of the national eight-hour ozone standard and encourage longer-term behavior changes that benefit air quality. There were no exceedances of the federal eight-hour ozone standard on either of the two Spare the Air/Free Transit days of the 2007 summer smog season.

MTC is the transportation planning, financing and coordinating agency for the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area.