The City of Austin’s public transportation agency said on Tuesday that more than two million customers boarded its buses and commuter rail system last month, Austin-based NBC station KXAN reported.
KXAN reported that Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (CapMetro) September tally of around 2.1 million riders is a first since before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dottie Watkins, the agency’s interim president and chief executive officer (CEO), said it was exciting to see people back to the normal flow of things once the first day of school rolled around, the station reported.
“That’s been really great to see and we continue to invest in our services to make sure that we can track the community, and we look forward to getting everybody back on board,” Watkins said in the report.
According to CapMetro, fiscal year 2022 (FY) – which is between October 2021 and a month ago – has seen approximately 21 million people use its services, KXAN reported.
CapMetro is among the slew of similar agencies in the U.S. that reported at least a 60% recount of its pre-COVID ridership levels.
Per the station, the most used CapMetro service is bus, with an average of close to 1.8 million riders a month.
Watkins said that just like with a lot of things, COVID-19 brought changes to how people travel on CapMetro.
“The peak travel times have changed, the peak travel days have changed,” she told KXAN.
She pointed out how Monday commuter levels are lighter than those of the rest of the week.