Bus ridership, revenue decline in RTC’s 2018 fiscal year

Ride-hailing companies continued to cut into bus ridership and revenue across Clark County, with routes on the Strip getting hit the hardest, officials with the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada said this week.

A little more than 12 million boardings were reported on the Deuce and the Strip & Downtown Express routes during the 2018 fiscal year that ended June 30, a 6.4 percent decline from the previous year, RTC Deputy General Manager M.J. Maynard told the agency’s board of directors Thursday.

Fare revenues on the Strip stood at $18.53 million during the 2018 fiscal year, down 9 percent from 2017, Maynard said.

Cumulatively, Maynard said that the Strip bus routes have lost $12.6 million in revenue since November 2015, two months after state lawmakers allowed Uber and Lyft to legally operate in Southern Nevada.

Residential bus ridership was up 1.2 percent with 51.7 million boardings, but revenue was down 2 percent at $46 million, Maynard said.

Overall, 63.77 million boardings were reported on the RTC’s entire network during the last fiscal year, a relatively flat 0.3 percent decline from 2017. Total fare revenue for the RTC was $64.58 million during the 2018 fiscal year, a 4.2 percent drop from the previous year.

RTC officials on Thursday also reported:

— Summer-related heat caused 265 buses to break down due to overheating during the 2018 fiscal year last summer, down from 426 instances in 2017.

— Fixed routes had an 86.8 percent on-time performance rate over the past year, maintaining the same rate reported in 2017.

— There were 41 passenger-on-driver assaults in fiscal 2018, down from 49 reported a year earlier.

— There were 106 passenger-on-passenger assaults in fiscal 2018, up from 80 during the previous year.

Contact Art Marroquin at amarroquin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0336. Follow @AMarroquin_LV on Twitter.