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More Tri-Cities residents than ever before are using transit since the Evergreen SkyTrain extension opened last year, according to preliminary figures from TransLink.

The regional transit authority’s CEO, Kevin Desmond, said at a board of directors meeting last week that combined rail and bus ridership in Metro Vancouver’s northeast sector is up 20 per cent. Evergreen, which opened in early December and sees about 30,000 boardings on an average weekday, is driving the ridership increase, but bus service changes that were instituted a few weeks later also had an effect.

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Also up “pretty sharply” is park and ride use in the area.

West Coast Express ridership is slightly down, however Desmond said it’s too early to understand the dynamic between the SkyTrain extension and West Coast Express.

“We’ll continue to look at that very closely,” he said.

Last year, ridership across the system increased 4.5 per cent over 2015 to almost 385 million boardings on buses, SkyTrain, SeaBus and West Coast Express, compared to almost 363 million boardings the year before. It was the largest year-over-year increase in ridership since the Canada Line opened.