Metrorail logged its 11th straight year of ridership increases, up 1.1 percent over last year. The 208 million trips people took on Metro this year marked Metro’s highest ever annual ridership. This also translates to the highest ever average weekday ridership – more than 702,000 per day – exceeding 700,000 riders a day for the first time ever.

Overall, this is great news. We love to see Metro luring more people out of their cars. More Metro means less traffic, less air pollution, and less global warming.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, it also puts a very fine point on the need to continue investing in the system. Service disruptions caused by aging equipment and infrastructure seem to happen more and more frequently, and even as new rail cars arrive and eight cars become the norm on most lines, those cars still don’t seem to be getting any less crowded. The most frightening part is that, once a rider leaves Metro for their car, they’re pretty hard to win back.

Photo by AlbinoFlea