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Hiawatha Line marks million-rider month

Busy August Metrodome schedule helps boost numbers

In August, Minnesota Twins fans attended 15 home games and helped the team inch closer to its division championship playoff berth.

The home-game stretch helped Metro Transit score a winning month for ridership on the Hiawatha Line. The rail service carried more than 1 million customers that month, setting a new monthly ridership record.

Metro Transit set four consecutive monthly records for rail service, beginning in May with 841,000 rides and growing to 1,013,500 rides in August. August rail ridership was 21 percent higher than August 2005.

The makeup of weekday ridership in August includes 50 percent during rush hour, 30 percent midday and 20 percent at night. Those figures don’t reflect the number of sports fans who have discovered the ease of taking the train downtown for Twins, Vikings and Gopher events. The Hiawatha Line is averaging 13 percent market share for Twins home games.

Light rail makes getting to games easy

“Fans have embraced the Hiawatha Line as a convenient way to attend Metrodome events,” said Metro Transit General Manager Brian Lamb. More than 152,000 rides were recorded for the Twins home games and two Viking pre-season games in August.

“It’s easy to understand why sports fans use the Hiawatha Line,” Lamb said. “They can park their cars at any of three park-and-ride lots along the line, buy their tickets, hop on the train and be downtown in minutes.”

Fans don’t have to hassle with parking or congestion that comes with downtown events, he said. “Once a game is over, it’s convenient for fans to head out of the Metrodome and be within a few steps of the station.”

Post-game rides are even easier for fans who purchase 6-Hour Passes on their way to the game. These passes not only provide round-trip travel, they eliminate the need for train riders to buy a return ticket after the game, when lines for ticket machines are long.

Sports fans aren’t the only ones who love the train

The primary mission of the Hiawatha light-rail line is to serve downtown commuters and increasing ridership shows that commuters are leaving their cars to take the train instead. In a 2005 survey, 86 percent of light-rail riders said that have at least one car but they choose rail service instead of driving.

“The growth in daily riders is the primary reason that our ridership has been so strong,” Lamb said.

Indeed, average weekday ridership has grown steadily. The average number of trips per weekday has increased 21 percent – to more than 36,000 – over the past year. That far exceeds the 24,000 daily rides Metro Transit expected to achieve by 2020.

This year, the months of June and July recorded total weekday average rides of 31,085 and 32,029, respectively. All figures include riders who took the train to special events.

Trains began service between downtown Minneapolis and Fort Snelling in June 2004. Full service to the airport and Mall of America began on Dec. 4, 2004.

In August, Metro Transit’s overall ridership topped 7 million, the highest monthly total in more than 23 years.