Tri-Rail Joins Palm Tran with Strong Ridership Increases

The South Florida Regional Transportation Authority (SFRTA) has announced that total ridership on Tri-Rail, including weekends and holidays, reached 3,948,100 in 2011. That’s up about 300,000 from 2010, an increase of 8.3 percent. Weekday ridership on Tri-Rail trains increased by 10 percent in 2011 -- 3,424,030 daily riders versus 3,117,556 in 2010.

Last year’s total marked the second highest ridership in the 22-year history of the commuter rail system, which serves Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties. Tri-Rail’s 2011 figures were surpassed only by 2008, when gas prices consistently hovered around $4 a gallon.

Palm Tran broke ridership records in fiscal year 2011 with a total of 11,124,904 passengers. It marked the first time in its 40-year history that the county transit system exceeded 11 million passenger trips. Overall ridership on Palm Tran’s fixed-route service increased by nearly 8 percent from the previous year and has grown by approximately 50 percent since 2004.

SFRTA officials said two keys to more people using Tri-Rail have been an improving employment outlook and better connectivity to feeder routes and other transit systems, such as Palm Tran. In 2011, Tri-Rail riders using partner-shuttle services increased by 64 percent -- a total of 783,947 passengers, compared with 479,155 in 2010.

In Palm Beach County, Palm Tran integrates bus service into Tri-Rail stations with two or more routes serving each station providing frequency and connectivity to buses and trains. Palm Tran’s Intermodal Transit Center in downtown West Palm Beach is located adjacent to Tri-Rail’s West Palm Beach station providing bus service from multiple routes and connectivity to the entire county.

Further underscoring the popularity of commuter transit service is the fact that 285 companies joined the SFRTA’s Employer Discount Program (EDP) in 2011, as did 2,829 individual employees.