Now that I'm back in Jax I have been riding the buses, and I have been noticing that they are more crowded than usual. When I lived in Jacksonville from 2006-09, buses were frequently almost empty, and I never had to sit next to anyone (as opposed to being able to gobble up two seats).
Now, mostly-empty buses are less frequent, and one or two times I have actually had to sit next to someone (which I don't particularly like).
I started to wonder, is it my imagination or has ridership gone up?
Its not my imagination; while ridership nationally has gone down (I suspect due to reduced service arising out of local governments' fiscal problems) JTA ridership went up over the past year (see
http://www.apta.com/resources/statistics/Documents/Ridership/2010_q1_ridership_APTA.pdf )
In addition, JTA's strategy of consolidating routes probably made some routes more crowded (which I do not like so much, of course).
