College students are boosting Green Line ridership into the future. The new light rail line is just shy of year 2030 ridership projections, or 40,936 weekday rides.

Metro Transit’s new light rail corridor averaged 40,445 weekday rides from Sept. 1 through Sept. 5, the first week of the University of Minnesota’s fall semester.

Average weekday ridership the week before totaled 36,801 passenger trips. Both numbers well exceed Metro Transit’s initial projections for the year 2015, when the state’s second light rail line was once expected to carry 28,500 riders per day.

Since debuting June 14, the line has carried 2.4 million passengers through the end of August.

Just shy of 80,000 riders used Metro Transit services to get to the Minnesota State Fair on Aug. 30, the fair’s peak ridership day. Metro Transit bus Route 84, which connects to the Green Line, carried 25,266 riders that day, nearly double from the year before. The route connects the Rosedale Shopping Center to Shepard Road.

The State Fair ridership increases were attributed to record Fair attendance, good weather and a new State Fair transit hub.