TheBus Reports 20,000 More Rides During Honolulu’s Free-Fare Promotion
It’s not yet clear how many of those added riders kept using TheBus after the weeklong deal ended.
Bus transit use across Oahu, , has slumped ever since the coronavirus pandemic hit. But the island鈥檚 ridership had a modest boost during last month’s promotion offering free rides to Holo card users.
TheBus saw a 12% ridership increase from Aug. 22 to Aug. 26 compared to the week prior to the promotion, according to a preliminary report from the city鈥檚 Department of Transportation Services. The city鈥檚 paratransit service, the Handi-Van, saw about an 18% boost.
DTS Director Roger Morton said Friday that he went into last week鈥檚 promotion hoping for a ridership increase of around 10% or so. 鈥淵ou always go into these things (wondering), what if you had a party and nobody came?鈥 Morton said. 鈥淟ooks like it was working.鈥
The system saw a weekday average of about 132,700 rides during the promotion. The week prior, that average was 113,000 rides, according to the city report.
鈥淭he key is, can we sustain the bump that we had during the promotion?鈥 Morton said.
He and his deputies at DTS have already dismissed cutting fare prices as a means to accomplish that. While the move might generate a short-term bump, they say, it could eventually lead to service cuts and, thus, fewer riders in the long term. The city actually raised fare rates earlier this summer.
Nonetheless, Morton said he鈥檚 considering ways to 鈥渢inker鈥 with bus fares so that they generate more revenue from visitors instead of locals.
In July, Morton that DTS expected the promotion would result in $128,000 in lost fare revenue. Instead, the city wound up losing just $46,000, Morton said. That might be because plenty of visitors without Holo cards were still using the bus, he added.
鈥淭his was targeted toward local residents,鈥 Morton said. 鈥淥ne of the reasons we said 鈥榦nly Holo card鈥 was to keep it local.” DTS must provide within 60 days a more detailed and conclusive report to the City Council on how the promotion went.
He said the ridership data for this past week following the promotion is still too raw, and they鈥檒l address just how much of the 12% boost was sustained in their council briefing.
The city also saw the typical monthly number of issued more than double in August. Some 36,000 of the electronic cards that can be used to ride the bus were issued last month. Typically, the city issues around 14,000 Holo cards a month, according to the DTS preliminary report.
The city is trying to get more Holo cards in circulation so that it can collect better data on ridership and travel trends. Riders will also need Holo cards to use the island’s rail transit system whenever it opens.
Last month, the cards were made available for free during a two-week period. Typically, a new Holo card costs $2.
In the early weeks of the pandemic, which started in 2020, TheBus saw ridership plunge from about 195,000 daily trips to聽.
Several weeks ago, ridership was hovering at about 115,000 daily trips, according to figures provided by DTS. City transportation officials were concerned about those trips plateauing at around 60% of TheBus’ pre-Covid use prior to their launching the free-fare promotion.
Morton鈥檚 aim is for bus ridership to get back to around 150,000 daily trips by March. He said that he asked DTS staff to analyze the routes and areas that attracted more riders during last week’s promotion, but no patterns jumped out at them.
鈥淚t was really all over the map,” he said.
Read DTS’ preliminary report here. (The report cites a “$182,000” decline in cash revenue but the department confirmed it should say $128,000.)
