Many bus riders last week were asked to share certain information with city workers in an effort to gauge the transit system's ridership numbers.
Nathan Nickolaus, interim city administrator and city attorney, said temporary city workers rode every bus during the first week of November during the hours of operation to get riders' names, addresses and the purpose of their ride. He said the survey technique was a way to get some concrete figures on how many people really use the mass transit system and why.
"We have never done that before because it's so time consuming and so difficult to do," he said.
The move came out of discussions during the City Council's budget committee earlier this year, when several council members questioned the amount of subsidies being awarded to the transit division and inquired as to how many people really ride the bus each day.
"They looked at a bunch of different mathematical, theoretical calculations of how many people are riding the bus," Nickolaus said. "The question everyone always wants to know is how many people, individuals, actually ride the bus ... ultimately, there's only one way to find that out, and that is to ask the people on the bus."