Rise of Uber, Lyft cut into bus ridership on Las Vegas Strip

Ride-hailing companies continued to cut into bus ridership along the Strip while residential routes remained steady in the rest of the Las Vegas Valley, officials with the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada said Thursday.

More than 6.18 million boardings were reported on the Deuce and the Strip & Downtown Express routes from July to December 2017, a 9 percent decline from the same period a year earlier, RTC Deputy General Manager M.J. Maynard said.

RTC officials said they have watched bus ridership gradually diminish along the Strip ever since state regulators allowed Uber and Lyft to operate in September 2015.

However, a report released last week found no clear relationship between long-term changes in public transit ridership and the usage of ride-hailing apps during peak hours.

Uber and Lyft are more commonly used on weekends and evenings — not during the rush hours when public buses are mostly used, according to the report by the Shared-Use Mobility Center, a ridesharing advocacy group in Chicago.

“At Uber, we are excited to continue exploring ways to build toward a future in which every journey is a shared one using a combination of mobility and transit services,” Uber spokeswoman Stephanie Sedlak said.

A Lyft spokeswoman declined to comment.

Maynard said the RTC will sponsor a customer survey to determine preferred transportation modes on the Strip, and the reasons for those choices.

Residential bus ridership decreased by a relatively flat .2 percent to more than 25.8 million boardings, Maynard said.

Systemwide, more than 32 million boardings were reported on RTC’s network from July to December 2017, a 2 percent drop from the same period a year earlier.

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