NORFOLK, Va. — In 2024, Hampton Roads Transit reported ridership increased by a staggering 25.8% compared to 2023.
In total, the number of trips on bus, light rail, ferry and paratransit services totaled 9.63 million, compared to 7.43 million in 2023.
News 3 has covered multiple stories with Hampton Roads Transit, from free rides to the Norfolk Tides games, to their new micro transit service in 2024. Turns out, these new initiatives seem to have paid off.
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However, the HRT is still not back to their pre-pandemic levels. This isn’t surprising since after the pandemic a lot more people, especially younger people, started working from home more.
In 2016, the largest cohort of riders was the 18-34 range, which sat at 56%. In 2023, it sat at just 27%.
That's why HRT is continuing to push services like their Freedom Pass, which gives free rides to high school students ages 13-17. They say younger people are starting to use their new microtransit service.
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“They get them used to transit at a very young age so when they do enter the workforce transit’s not foreign to them. That’s the way you grow your future audience. Is that you partner with them when they’re still in school," said HRT’s Planning and Development Coordinator, Ray Amoruso.
Other factors may impact ridership in the future too. Amoruso thinks with the national push to bring people back to the office, we could see the ridership of this cohort rise again.
“72% of all people using transit use transit because they have to. So when 72% of that start using transit, you see that market increase,” he said.
So, how are the numbers rising for each transit service?
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Before COVID-19, ridership for buses came in at just under one million, before dropping to 300,000 at the height of quarantine. It’s now around 700,000.
For the Tide Light Rail, it was around 1.3 million before dropping to 600,000. It’s now hovering around 830,000.
If you take the ferry, that’s almost back to pre-pandemic levels. It was just under 300,000 before COVID. Now, it’s just above 200,000.
The VB Wave is currently the only transit option that is back to pre-pandemic levels.
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“We’re reliable, we’re not missing trips like we used to. We’re hiring more bus operators,” Amoruso said.
Amoruso says there is a way to measure that reliability. They are having less breakdowns, and their routes arrive on time with more frequency.
And when it comes to 2025 numbers, data from HRT shows the numbers they are getting back are already surpassing projections for this year.
