Metro Transit ridership recovery was slow. Now it's in decline
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Metro Transit's sluggish post-pandemic recovery is growing even more concerning as ridership numbers are sliding in the wrong direction.
Why it matters: A 7% decline so far this year is especially worrisome considering the backdrop — Twin Cities employers have been tightening their remote work policies, which means more people commuting.
The big picture: National ridership was up 7% in the first quarter of the year and reached 85% of pre-pandemic levels.
- Metro Transit topped out around 60% of pre-pandemic ridership last year, but that number has fallen to 57%, despite the addition of several speedier bus rapid-transit routes in the past five years that were meant to increase usage.
What they're saying: Amy Werdine was a regular user of the Green and Blue line trains to get around from her Downtown East apartment before the pandemic, riding them to the airport, restaurants in South Minneapolis and events in St. Paul.
- She found the trains back then safe and frequent, but that's not the case anymore, especially at the U.S. Bank Stadium station, where drug use is a problem.
- Werdine says she loves downtown, still feels incredibly safe walking around and defends the city when people say they're scared to visit.
- "Having said all of that, I basically do not ride the light rail anymore for a lot of reasons, and it makes me sad."
By the numbers: Year-over-year crime on the system was up 7% in the first quarter of 2025, also a reversal of 2024 trends.
The other side: "We believe our ongoing service improvements and the steps we're taking to provide a more consistently clean, safe, and welcoming experience on transit will lead more people to choose transit over time," Metro Transit general manager Lesley Kandaras said in a statement.
- Eric Lind, director of the Accessibility Observatory at the University of Minnesota's Center for Transportation Studies, said Metro Transit should be compared to other metro agencies with similar transit infrastructure and population, like Atlanta, Seattle, Dallas and Portland.
- He said those systems have 60 to 75% recovery rates, which means Metro Transit is not as far out of step as it may seem.
Reality check: That is true for some cities, but Dallas was already 78% recovered back in 2023 and Portland was at 68%, though Denver's transit recovery rate was only 62% last year.
Between the lines: Lind, who previously worked at Metro Transit, noted that a 2022 survey of riders showed 7% are primarily Spanish speakers. Even though Metro Transit police don't ask about immigration status, he said, some riders may be trying to avoid contact with law enforcement after ICE ramped up arrests.
For Green Line rider Rachel Shields, the less populated trains don't feel as safe as before the pandemic, there aren't ample public parking lots on the route and the express bus she used to ride was cancelled. That's added up to her opting to drive more.
State of play: As a growing number of employers call workers back into the office, it's likely that freeways and parking ramps get jammed.
- When that's happened before, it has increased transit usage, Lind said.
Katie Morrison has been a Metro Transit user for 26 years and continues to feel safe, but one reason she's been driving more is that the buses to her downtown Minneapolis job aren't as frequent as they were before the pandemic.
- If traffic gets worse, she said might opt for more bus rides.
The bottom line: The next few months of ridership data will be ever more important in telling the story of Twin Cities riders' confidence in the system.