Commuters who took public transit to get around Metro Vancouver during the 2010 Winter Olympics have stayed with it for their post-Games commutes, according to newly released Trans-Link ridership numbers. In March, transit ridership was up by 19.3 per cent over the same month in 2009, a number TransLink spokesman Drew Snider said was not inflated by this past March's Paralympic Games visitors.

"We didn't have the same service level during the Paralympics that we did during the Olympics because the demand wasn't there," he said. "Even taking the Paralympics into account, we're still seeing a significant amount of what I would call 'hit and stick,' where people took [transit] and then they stayed.

While pre-Games statistics for January 2010 show a modest ridership increase of 3.1 per cent over the previous year, February's Games-time ridership totalled 22.9 million riders -- a staggering 50.7 per cent increase over February 2009.

According to Snider, the typically under-used transit routes such as the West Coast Express and the SeaBus are showing the most impressive post-Olympics ridership numbers over the previous year, alongside marked increases in the use of the Canada Line and its connecting buses south of the Fraser River.

The SeaBus alone had more than 44,000 additional riders in March 2010 compared to March 2009, Snider said.

"I think people discovered that it was there. A lot of what the Olympics did in general was show people in Metro Vancouver just what their system can do," he said. "People were recognizing that it is very much an option, an alternative to going over the Lions Gate or Second Narrows bridges."

Snider said that despite the increase in rider-generated revenues, TransLink's budget shortfall presently prohibits the system from expanding beyond to-day's capacity level, which it reached in August 2009 with the opening of the Canada Line.

What is in TransLink's near future, however, is turnstiles in transit stations by the end of this year and planned "smart cards," which would charge transit riders based on the distances they travel by 2013.

While TransLink has not yet found a company to install the smart-card system, Snider said that they plan to have an agreement with an operator before the end of the year.

"One of the things we're looking at is how to get away from the three-zone system that we've got right now, which worked 25 years ago when it was brought in, but the region has changed," he said. "This would allow people to be charged by the distance they travel -- whether they're on the train or the bus, it shouldn't make any difference."