Gas Prices and NYC Bus Ridership

Do gas prices really effect bus ridership?

I recently compared NYC Bus ridership between 2008 through 2010.

In 2008, when gasoline hit all time record highs, ridership was up 45,000,000 unlinked annual trips compared to 2010 stats.   Total unnlinked annual trips for 2008 were approximately 746,731,000.

Comparing 2008 to 2009, ridership dropped about 21,000,000 million unlinked annual trips in 2009 as gasoline sharply dropped and leveled off.

Below is a gasoline chart for the same period courtesy of gasbuddy.com