Sun Metro officials are looking for ways to boost ridership and bring in financial sponsorships for El Paso’s fledgling streetcar system, which has struggled to attract riders after getting off to a fast start late last year.

Making the service free all the time would help boost ridership, said Jay Banasiak, director of Sun Metro, El Paso's transit system. Free rides on weekends were offered the first two months of operation.

After several slow months, ridership picked up in June, when free summer service began due to a sponsorship from a Downtown hotel and two El Paso business organizations.

The streetcars, which began operating Nov. 9, 2018, drew 158,509 passengers in the first eight months of operation, Sun Metro data shows.

That means Banasiak's March 2018 projection of drawing about 600,000 riders in the first 12 months of operation, or about 50,000 riders per month, will be well off target with only about three months left before the system hits its one-year birthday.

"When we were trying to do our projection for a service we never had run before, we were looking at what cities our size were doing" with ridership on long-established streetcar systems, Banasiak said.

"There's no hard, fast rule for streetcars. A lot depends on how fast development happens around the line," he said.

Ridership plummeted after Downtown's WinterFest

Just over 44 percent of the streetcars' ridership in the first eight months of operation came in November and December, when 70,236 people rode the trolleys during the city's Downtown WinterFest, when weekend rides were free and the streetcars were a novelty.

In the following six months, January through June, the streetcars had 88,273 passengers, or an average of 488 riders per day.

The trolleys are often running empty or with only a handful of passengers during weekdays. The system has the largest ridership on weekends, and when baseball games and soccer matches, or other special events take place in the Downtown area, Banasiak said.

Ridership is expected to grow as more businesses develop along the 4.8-mile, two-loop route, and as more people get used to riding them, Banasiak said.

The streetcar system's primary goal is to encourage business development along the route, Banasiak said, especially on Kansas Street and Father Rahm Avenue on the southern edge of Downtown, and on Stanton Street, especially outside Downtown, Banasiak said.

It likely will take two to three years to get ridership to higher, sustainable levels, he said.

More: Want to ride the El Paso Streetcar? Here's your guide to tickets, hours, routes

Sun Metro and the city Museums and Cultural Affairs Department are organizing special streetcar events as another way to draw riders. Those include using a streetcar for monthly concerts by El Paso musicians, monthly library story times for children and the recently started Streetcar Soccer Series, in which a Locomotive soccer team player is interviewed during a streetcar ride once a week through mid-August.

The concerts and story times have attracted standing-room crowds on the trolley used for the events, said Erin Ritter, public affairs coordinator for the cultural affairs department.

The first soccer player interview only drew one family.

KEEP UP with changes in El Paso's transit system. Click here to subscribe to elpasotimes.com

Free streetcar systems drawing strong ridership numbers in several cities

“Our goal is to have a free service" because it makes it easier for people to hop on and off the trolley cars, which aren't designed for long trips, and that would help boost ridership, Banasiak said.

Kansas City, Washington, D.C., and Tampa, Florida, have free streetcar systems, and have stronger ridership numbers than those that charge fares in several other cities, published reports show.

Little Rock, Arkansas, is offering free rides on its streetcars in 2019 as a way to combat low ridership in recent years, according to a Rock Region Metro news release.

The El Paso Streetcar line's regular fare is $1.50, the same fare for riding Sun Metro's buses. Lower fares are available for students, military members, children, and senior citizens.

Sun Metro collected only $48,026 in fares in the streetcars' first eight months of operation, Sun Metro data shows. Banasiak in 2018 had projected fare revenue of about $400,000 for the first year of operation, based on his 600,000 riders projection.

The system, which cost $97 million in Texas Department of Transportation-allotted money to build, has six restored trolley cars that were used on El Paso's earlier streetcar system, which operated from the 1950s until 1974.

It operates mostly with three of the six trolleys in use at one time on two loops — a circular, Downtown route, and the longer, so-called Uptown route, which runs from Downtown to Sun Metro's Glory Road Transit Center on the edge of the University of Texas at El Paso campus.

Sun Metro recently launched a phone app that allows people to track when streetcars will arrive at various passenger stops.

Sponsorship, naming rights would help subsidize system operations

Sun Metro and other city agencies are trying to bring in streetcar sponsorships and advertising on the new, streetcar-tracking app as ways to generate revenue to help subsidize the service, and allow it to provide free rides, Banasiak said.

That includes trying to sell naming rights for the streetcar system, such as was done in Cincinnati, Banasiak said. That Ohio city's three-year-old streetcar system is named the Cincinnati Bell Connector because Cincinnati Bell, an Ohio communications company, is paying $3.4 million over 10 years for the system's naming rights. That money helps subsidize the system, which has had problems meeting ridership expectations, according to published reports.

The El Paso Streetcar service is currently subsidized by federal grants and Sun Metro's special city sales tax of 0.5 percent, which provides the majority of funding for the entire city transit system.

The first major El Paso Streetcar sponsorship is happening this summer, which is allowing streetcar rides to be free through Labor Day. The free rides, which began June 17, are likely a big reason ridership increased in June to 22,540, Banasiak said. That's the largest monthly ridership total since December's 32,399 passengers, according to Sun Metro data.

The El Paso Chamber of Commerce, the tax-supported Downtown Management District, and the DoubleTree Hotel by Hilton are paying a combined $15,000 to help subsidize the streetcar system during the summer to allow free summer rides.

Sun Metro has yet to work out an exact formula for what to charge for sponsorships, Banasiak said. More ridership data is needed to calculate such a formula, he said.

Pamela Rivera, 23, a Juarez resident who's been riding the streetcar for about a month to get to her Downtown hotel job, said making the service free would help students, like herself, ride the streetcars. She's been using a $7 weekly student Sun Metro pass, which can be used to ride Sun Metro buses and streetcars, she said.

"It's better to rides buses or the trolleys rather than drive cars" and add to air pollution, Rivera said.

Federal grants subsidizing El Paso Streetcar startup

The streetcar system is now subsidized with $3.34 million in federal grants, including an $800,000 grant that Sun Metro is scheduled to get in 2020, Banasiak said. Sun Metro is required to match the grants with $834,928 in Sun Metro money, which comes from the special city sales tax supporting the transit system.

The service is costing $2.82 million to operate in the city's current fiscal year, ending Aug. 31, according to Sun Metro data.

The annual budget going forward will likely be around $2.8 million, but that will be determined by operating hours, and other factors, which Sun Metro continues to change as it determines the best way to operate the system, Banasiak said.

Vic Kolenc may be reached at 546-6421; vkolenc@elpasotimes.com; @vickolenc on Twitter.

Streetcar ridership

Passengers per month since the El Paso Streetcar system launched on Nov. 9, 2018: