April spike in RTS ridership sees youth making up about a fourth of trips in Rapid City

RAPID CITY, S.D. (KEVN) - The Rapid Transit System recorded more than 21,000 passenger trips in April, marking the highest overall ridership in the past five years.

This is a 19% increase from last April, which saw an overall ridership total of 17,784, and compared to 2022, this was a 29% jump. One of the big factors in how high the ridership numbers for last month were was, in part, youth passenger trips reaching 5,657, a 31% increase from 2023 and a 46% increase from 2022.

These numbers are only from last month, with city officials saying the overall picture has been optimistic since October last year.

“This school year, we’re over 40,000 youth passport trips. That’s a huge increase over, about a 30% increase over what we had for youth passenger trips just the last school year for that first eight months,” Rapid City’s communications coordinator Darrell Shoemaker explained.

The hope for RTS is that the free youth ridership program will continue encouraging youths across Rapid City to use public transportation, providing a convenient way for everyone to have another reliable form of transportation in the community.

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