If you’ve been riding the bus more lately (or for the first time) you’re not alone.

In an article in the Ann Arbor News today, John Mulcahy reports that more and more people are riding AATA buses.  One of the primary reasons cited in the article is the rise in gas prices.

While many of the riders on the buses are affiliated with the UM, the article reports that recently, some of the ridership increases are due to other, non-UM folk riding the bus.

And, as reported in the article, I am seeing increased use of the go!pass, which allows downtown employees to ride the buses for free.

The one thing the article doesn’t talk about is that more people riding the bus doesn’t mean more bus service.  Apparently, since fare revenue (the amount a person pays to use the bus) is so low relative to the total cost of operating a bus, it’s hard to increase service when lots more people ride the bus.

In some ways, I am ok with this.  The bus is like a public good, and it’s important that the cost is kept low so that all sorts of people can use the service.  However, in other ways, this really frustrates me because it means that we must rely on government or other sources of funding to increase service.  And it’s not always easy to get that money.

I hope that as more and more people ride the bus, more people will see the value of having excellent bus service.  This in turn will demonstrate to policy makers (and perhaps private companies) that all of us want a high level of bus service, rail service, etc.

So in all, I think it’s fantastic that there are more people riding the bus.  Let’s keep showing our support for public transit, both by riding the bus and by speaking out about the need for high quality service.

In light of the fact that more people are riding AATA buses that ever before, some of you might be wondering if the number of people putting their bikes on the buses is also increasing.

Well it is.

According to the AATA, the number of people boarding an AATA bus and putting their bikes on the bus has been increasing for the last several years.

In May 2008, there were 3,056 bus boardings with bikes.  This is up 18% from 2,593 bike boardings for May 2007.

What might account for this increase?  Well it makes sense that as more people ride the bus, more people will bring their bikes on the bus.  But I also wonder if some of the reason is that people are biking from further away to catch the bus.  Or perhaps more people are just biking in general, and that is leading to more bikes on the bus.

Another interesting stat that I just came across is how many people in the downtown report commuting by bike:

In a 2001 UM study, 2.2% of people surveyed reported commuting by bike to the downtown.
In a 2005 UM study, the percentage increased to 4.2%
And in a study conducted last year (October 2007) by getDowntown (which had similar numbers of survey respondents), the bike commuting percentage was 7.4%

So according to the data at hand, there definitely seems to be an increase in the numbers of people bike commuting, as I surmised in yesterday’s post.