Ridership down 91.5%, Metra adding air purification system

Metra’s ridership continues to remain far below normal — with passenger trips per month still only at 8.5% of pre-pandemic levels — but the transit agency says it plans to add a new air filtration system to help bring customers back.

In January of last year, passengers took nearly 6 million trips, but a year later, ridership this past January barely broke 500,000 trips. Last month’s number was even lower, at 493,000 trips. Metra had earlier estimated that passenger trips would reach 20% of prepandemic levels by 2021.

While the trains saw 25,000 daily passenger trips for the first time since October, the number is still lower than expected.

The reduction in trips has hurt Metra’s bottom line.

In January, Metra saw a huge deficit in rider fares and was way over budget in operating expenses. However, using relief funding from the federal CARES Act, and a one-time $8 million payment from Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District, the railway ended the month with a $2.8 million surplus.

During a Wednesday board meeting, Metra Chief Financial Officer Thomas Farmer said the agency went over budget in areas like engineering and diesel fuel in part because the current budget was created six months ago when it was hard to predict ridership. There are plans to create a new budget around April.

“That revised budget will reflect some of what our thought processes are with increased ridership in the upcoming months,” said James Derwinski, the CEO and executive director of Metra. “But there is no crystal ball on this. There hasn’t been anyone who’s got this right so far. There’s a lot of things that are out of any of our control.”

Derwinski said Metra will continue to monitor trains to make sure they are safe and not too crowded while waiting for riders to slowly return.

On Feb. 1, 10 trains were added, bringing the total trains in use to 408.