Ridership usage for Grand River Transit is not only reaching pre-pandemic numbers, but surpassing pre-pandemic levels in certain parts of the region.
Neil Malcolm, Acting Director of Transit Services for the Region of Waterloo, said there has been a significant recovery in transit ridership in the region, with use of services going back to 80-90 per-cent of what it was before the pandemic.
According to Malcolm, there have been changes in terms of how people are commuting and going to work, with ridership going beyond the usual peak hours.
"People are travelling at all times of day," said Malcolm. "You can see it on the roads, in terms of traffic. You can see it in our ridership. So rather than everyone going out first thing in the morning and going to work, maybe they're taking that first meeting at home, or the first class, then they're getting on the service and travelling at all times of day."
Malcolm added that Grand River Transit was seeing some it's best ridership in history around the time of the ION train being introduced in the second half of 2019.
New census numbers from Statistics Canada show that there were one million transit users across the country in 2021.
