Bart said weekday ridership has been climbing by 10% to 13% a month for the past six months, a steady rebound that is bringing more people back onto Bay Area trains even as the system remains well below its old peak. The agency’s pre-pandemic average weekday ridership was about 410,000, and current weekday traffic is still around half of what it once was.
Michael Roccaforte called the growth exciting and said the agency is proud of it. The numbers matter because they show a transit system that is still far from full recovery but is moving in the right direction at a time when commuters are watching gas prices and weighing whether driving is worth it.
That pattern is not unique to Bart. Muni averaged 529,000 weekday boardings in March, or 79% of March 2019 levels, while weekend ridership reached 99% of March 2019 levels and total boardings for the month came to 14.9 million. Caltrain said March brought another post-pandemic ridership record, after jumps of 27% in January and 30% in February.
Riders on the ground are describing a practical shift rather than a civic slogan. Cynthia Giovannini said taking transit is stress-free because she can read on the train and catch up on work, and she said higher gas prices are part of the appeal. Camille Shakirova said the cost and environmental impact of driving make her unsurprised that more people are taking transit, while Dan Lieberman said higher prices can push people onto trains and buses long enough for them to realize it is a better way to get where they need to go.
Transit officials say the rebound is also being helped by service changes and better operations. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency said subway delays are down about 60% since the pandemic, bus breakdowns are happening less often and it recently received its highest customer satisfaction rating ever. Even with those gains, Bart, Muni and Caltrain are still operating below pre-pandemic ridership levels, which leaves the region’s recovery tied to whether riders who have returned keep coming back.
