Slack ridership continues to dog Metra’s bottom line, officials said during a preliminary 2025 budget forecast Wednesday.
“One of the important things that’s going to drive our budget plan is where we think the ridership is going to grow over the next three years,” Chief Financial Officer John Morris said.
The X Factor is commuters, many of whom are still working from home several days a week.
“Return to office is slower than we projected,” Morris noted at a Finance Committee meeting.
In 2019, Metra operated about 74 million passengers trips, but that shrank to 18.6 million in 2020 when COVID-19 hit.
While those numbers have shot up since, ridership is still far below pre-pandemic norms. Metra had budgeted for 40 million trips in 2024, but the final figure could end up being in the range of 37 million.
“We definitely need to see more people coming back to work downtown on a weekly basis and not on a three-day basis,” committee Chair Ken Koehler said. “That remains to be seen.”
Less riders means less ticket revenues and a budget shortfall that the agency is filling with federal COVID-19 relief. That aid will run out in 2026 for Metra, as well as Pace and the CTA.
However, sales tax revenues are a bright spot.
Sales tax “is expected to grow at a significant rate,” Morris said, citing Regional Transportation Authority projections of $593 million in sales tax funds for 2025, a spike from 2024.
Asked how Metra compares to its peer transit agencies in terms of wooing back riders, Morris said, “the East Coast is far ahead of the Midwest. The Midwest is far ahead of the West Coast. We’re right in the middle of the trend.”
Early in 2024, Metra introduced several new fare products.
The preliminary numbers in Wednesday’s report “do not incorporate any fare changes in that, so that’s another area that we’ll be looking for board input on,” Morris said.