Muni has been bucking nationwide trends of declining ridership. Last year, Muni saw about 720,000 boardings on the average weekday. Ten years ago, the system saw about 650,000 average weekday boardings, that is a 10 percent increase. Nationwide, transit ridership is down by four percent over the past two years. This has been driven by declines in bus ridership, which is down by 7 percent.
Over the last two years, the SFMTA has made a series of improvements systemwide and those investments are paying off as ridership has largely increased. Rapid bus routes grew by 8 percent, Frequent service is up 3 percent, and Express is also up 5 percent. At the corridor level, ridership increased significantly on Mission (11 percent), Geary up by 6 percent and Bayshore up by 11 percent.
Over the past three years, we implemented some of the most significant service changes in Muni history, including launching the Rapid network, significantly realigning routes to better meet demand and improving reliability through travel time improvements.
We have been pleased to see these positive changes implemented and would like to thank everyone for riding Muni.