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BART ridership up over Labor Day weekend, overnight ridership down

A total of 539,400 passengers took BART over the Labor Day weekend. That's 61,800 or 13% more passengers than BART anticipated would've taken BART had Caltrans not shutdown the eastbound lanes of the Bay Bridge for the entire weekend to perform earthquake retrofit work. The number of people who took BART during the overnight hours was 10,200.

Final ridership figures show that 204,600 people rode BART on Saturday, 175,800 took BART on Sunday and 159,000 chose BART on Labor Day for a total of 539,400 passengers. Of that number, 10,200 rode BART during the overnight hours when BART is usually closed.

BART service usually ends around midnight and resumes at 6 a.m. on Saturdays and at 8 a.m. on Sundays. This Labor Day, BART operated on a Saturday schedule so normal service began around 6 a.m. BART trains don't usually run during the overnight hours so that employees can perform safety inspections and critical maintenance work designed to help ensure BART can maintain its stringent 95% passenger on-time record.

OVERNIGHT SERVICE LOWER THAN PREVIOUS WEEKENDS
Fewer people took advantage of BART's overnight service this Labor Day Weekend as compared with the previous two times BART operated overnight service to help passengers get around the Bay while Caltrans closed portions of the Bay Bridge for earthquake retrofit work.

Those previous weekends were June 2 & 3, 2006 and October 15 & 16, 2005. BART operated overnight service Friday night thru Saturday morning, and again Saturday night into Sunday morning during both weekends. During the Labor Day Weekend, there were three nights of overnight service, including Sunday night into Monday morning.

However, if you do a direct comparison of average ridership for the Friday night into Saturday morning and Saturday night into Sunday mornings for each of the three weekends, the average number of people who took advantage of BART overnight service has been trending downward.

The average number of passengers/night of the October 15 & 16, 2005 weekend was 4,600 and the average number of passengers/night during the June 2 & 3, 2006 weekend was 4,350 passengers. The average number of passengers/night during this Labor Day weekend (excluding Sunday night into Monday morning) was 4,000.

LABOR DAY WEEKEND BART RIDERSHIP

  • SATURDAY
    ACTUAL RIDERSHIP 204,600
    PROJECTED RIDERSHIP 191,100
    % INCREASE 7%
    OVERNIGHT RIDERSHIP 2,900 (1:45 a.m. 5:59 a.m.)
  • SUNDAY
    ACTUAL RIDERSHIP 175,800
    PROJECTED RIDERSHIP 155,400
    % INCREASE 13%
    OVERNIGHT RIDERSHIP 5,100 (1:45 a.m..-7:59 a.m.)
  • LABOR DAY
    ACTUAL RIDERSHIP 159,000
    PROJECTED RIDERSHIP 131,200
    % INCREASE 21%
    OVERNIGHT RIDERSHIP 2,100 (1:45 a.m.-5:59 a.m.)
  • 3-DAY TOTAL
    ACTUAL RIDERSHIP 539,400
    PROJECTED RIDERSHIP 477,600
    % INCREASE 13%
    OVERNIGHT RIDERSHIP 10,200