First 15 Days of Service in 2007
January 19, 2007
“Ridership figures in the first 15 days of operation of this year rose by 5.43% over last year’s record of 6, 529,765 passengers,” Administrator Melquiades Robles announced.
From the total ridership count, Line 1 system (Baclaran-Monumento) remained the highest with 4,773,950, but with a meager increase of 3.82% from last year’s 4,598,433 passengers.
Surprisingly, ridership in the Line 2 system (Santolan-Recto) rose significantly to 2,110,632, which is 9.28% higher from the previous count of 1,931,332 passengers.
The rise in the Line 2 system’s ridership is attributed to a growing patronage as well the setting up of additional feeder terminals for FX and jeepneys near major stations.
Robles also said the over-all growth is bolstered by the increase in the availability of trains in the revenue line, particularly for the Line 1 system.
“It has always been our firm commitment to make available more trains to the public. That is why we are making available 25 trains on peak hours and an average of 22 trains per 17 hours of operation for the Line 1 system and have maintained our 12 trainsets per 17 hours of operation for the Line 2 system,” he explained.
Robles said the LRTA is encouraged by the ridership report even though it is premature to project any record high increase based on the first 15 days of the year of service.
“The ridership trend is increasing if we look at our previous 3-years record. On the feast day of the Black Nazarene in January 9 alone we drew around 432, 591 passengers to the Line 1 system, which is 0.74% higher than last year’s celebration, which attracted around 428,845 passengers,” Robles noted.
From 2004 to 2005, over-all ridership for the 2 line systems increased by 24.8% and again surged to 8.10% from 2005 to 2006, translating to an average annual growth of 13% for the 3-year period.
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