Winnipeg Transit lost over 1.6 million riders in 2015 compared to the previous year, according to revised numbers published in the city’s 2017 operating budget.

The 3.3% drop comes after a decade of ridership growth in the city, but it also follows a year when that growth began to level off. In 2014, ridership was up by less than 1%. So, what’s behind the sudden decline?

Transit officials aren’t sure. The 2015 decrease was part of a national trend in which transit ridership dropped in a number of major Canadian cities, including Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Edmonton. No one really knows why. Some have attributed it to last year’s economic decline. But job losses and income deterioration could just as easily push people from vehicles to transit as it could see them disappear from buses, streetcars and subways.

Winnipeg Transit counted 48.23 million passenger trips in 2015, down from 49.88 million in 2014. The average number of weekday passengers was 174,441 in 2014. That dropped to 169,758 last year.

Part of the decline may be attributed to the cancellation of a number of buses that occurred during a maintenance backlog last year. But that can only be a very small part of the reason since the number of kilometres and hours logged through Transit’s 93 routes was largely unchanged in 2015 compared to the previous year.

When asked why they believe ridership fell in 2015, Transit officials said only that ridership fluctuates from year to year and that the low cost of gasoline was a key factor.

I think there’s more to it than that.

The reality is, Transit did a very poor job of keeping up with demand over the past decade. While ridership was increasing on average about 2.5% a year, Transit wasn’t increasing its capacity. They added no buses at all to the fleet from 2005 to 2009, even though ridership was growing at close to twice the rate of the city’s population growth. In 2009 they added 10 buses but didn’t add any more until 2012 when 20 more were added. There were 626 buses in the fleet by the end of 2015.

But because Transit still relies on diesel buses and hasn’t moved in a substantial way to electric vehicles – there are three electric buses on the road now and they work extremely well, with very little maintenance – diesel buses are frequently off the road for repair. Today’s emissions control systems in diesel buses are stringent and they break down a lot, which means diesel buses are often out of commission.

In the meantime, buses have become more crowded and drivers are regularly forced to pass people by at stops because buses are full, which means Transit has become a less reliable mode of transportation and people are finding alternate ways of getting to work and school.

While city hall is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into Bus Rapid Transit, which has done nothing to increase ridership, they’ve neglected basic bus service in the city.

It’s no surprise that ridership is on the decline.

What the city should do is invest more into basic bus service, including adding more buses to the fleet — electric ones — and expand routes, while substantially increasing the frequency of buses. There should be more express routes, more diamond lanes and more priority signals.

Even pricing should be reviewed. Maybe some market research is in order.

Imagine if they took even half the money they’re dumping into rapid transit and used it to beef up regular bus service?

There are no simple answers to explain why ridership is down in Winnipeg, even though the city’s population is growing. And because it’s part of a larger national trend, there are likely reasons beyond those that are peculiar to Winnipeg that are driving the numbers down.

But it would be foolish to ignore the effects that poor planning and a deterioration of basic bus service is having on the numbers.

If people can’t rely on Transit to get to where they want to go, they’ll find other ways of getting there. And apparently they are.