SkyTrain overwhelmingly used as ‘Getaway Car’ during Taylor Swift’s Vancouver concerts

TransLink released ridership growth statistics on Wednesday. Here's a look at where the growth is happening.

Taylor Swift’s “Getaway Car” is a crowd pleaser – but new numbers from TransLink show how many of her fans turned to SkyTrain cars to make their own entrances and exits from her Vancouver shows.

TransLink’s annual transit service review contains all sorts of figures, including the system usage during the pop stars concert series in the city last year – when ridership spiked 116 percent at Stadium-Chinatown Station.

“For the three days that Taylor Swift was in town, ridership at Stadium-Chinatown more than doubled,” TransLink’s Dan Mountain told CTV News on Wednesday outside the station. “Throughout the year, there was really an increase in events or sporting events ... that helped drive our ridership growth.”

The annual report also found that Lower Mainland’s transit ridership now surpasses Greater Toronto’s on a per-capita basis.

Meanwhile South of the Fraser, ridership leaped by more than 11 percent annually – no pop stars required.

While transit advocates like to see that growth – it comes with major challenges.

“Being crushed on the bus isn’t a pleasant experience and it shows that there’s a huge demand for it,” City of Langley Mayor Nathan Pachal told CTV News on Wednesday, talking about overcrowding on some bus routes. “And so, I think it’s a continued call for all levels of government to continue to invest in public transit.”

Those concerns about overcrowding are echoed by transit advocates, who want transit funding expanded throughout the region – as opposed to the scenario happening now where some routes have reduced service to accommodate high-demand routes.

“Transit is really overcrowded and they’ve been doing what they can to address it, but they need to do more,” said Denis Agar, with the advocacy group Movement: Metro Vancouver Transit Riders.

“I’m also worried about Vancouver. Service in Vancouver has been cut really deeply to reallocate that service to Surrey, but what we’re seeing is a feedback loop, where the service cuts are resulting in a drop in ridership.”

While TransLink and advocates say there are plenty of positives to take away from this report, there still are questions over funding, with the province only committing operating funding through 2027, and plenty of growth expected in the region in the coming years.