
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, February 28, 1995                   TAG: 9502280089
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

ROANOKE REGIONAL ECONOMIC INDICATOR

Once upon a time, snow pushed people out of their cars and into buses, boosting Valley Metro's ridership. Apparently, that's no longer true.

One recent snowy Monday, Jan. 30, sent the bus system's average weekday ridership plunging and also affected the monthly statistics. Kathy Pruitt, spokeswoman for Valley Metro, said that only about 2,700 people rode the bus that day as weekend snow continued into the workweek.

That dropped the January average weekday ridership to 4,906, compared with 5,178 in December and 5,065 in January 1994. Pruitt said the total would have been only slightly behind last year's except for that Monday. Ridership has been recovering slowly from a drop that followed the system's fare increase in July.

by CNB