OGX sees successful initial months; 6 buses added to service last month
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- An Ogden Express bus is utilized to cut the ribbon on the new OGX route under a rain of confetti Wednesday, Aug. 2, 2023.
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- A map of the route serving the Ogden Express bus rapid transit system in Ogden.
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- Newly painted routes for the Ogden Express bus rapid transit system run along Harrison Boulevard in this photo shared May 23, 2023.
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- The 36th Street Ogden Express bus rapid transit station awaits passengers on Tuesday, July 11, 2023.
Rob Nielsen, Standard-Examiner
An Ogden Express bus is utilized to cut the ribbon on the new OGX route under a rain of confetti Wednesday, Aug. 2, 2023.
OGDEN — As the Ogden Express bus rapid transit system, dubbed OGX, enters its first full calendar year of operation, officials are touting its first few months as a stunning success.
Utah Transit Authority spokesperson James Larson told the Standard-Examiner that the service has been popular since it first began taking passengers Aug. 20.
“The ridership has been phenomenal,” he said. “We started out with about 22,000 monthly riders in August when we first started it. Now we’ve grown to 91,000 riders per month coming into November. We don’t have December numbers yet.”
He said there are several trends that have been noticed since the service began regularly transporting passengers along a route from Ogden Central Station at 23rd Street and Wall Avenue to Weber State University and McKay-Dee Hospital further south on Harrison Boulevard.
“We’ve got everything from students utilizing it to get up to campus,” he said. “For the Twilight concerts, a lot of people were riding FrontRunner down and taking OGX over to the amphitheater, and then we had kind of the same thing happen during Christmas — a lot of people were riding FrontRunner and riding OGX to the Christmas Village or Electric Light Parade.”
Image supplied, Utah Transit Authority
A map of the route serving the Ogden Express bus rapid transit system in Ogden.
Larson added that Weber State’s football season also saw many fans using the service to get to and from games, while OGX is bringing more and more students into town. He said it’s also helped cut down on the number of cars parked at McKay-Dee Hospital with patients and staff alike utilizing the service.
The introduction of the service as has been smooth overall, according to Larson, and has avoided any major snags.
“Our biggest concern was our center stations on Harrison Boulevard — just the safety of pedestrians as they cross — but honestly, it’s been amazing,” he said. “People are crossing at the lights themselves. Knock on wood, we haven’t had any incidents with people going into those center stations. We haven’t had any incidents up at Weber State with us driving through the middle of the campus. It’s been extremely safe.”
However, there has been one major change to the route.
“As we kind of moved forward with everything, we realized we needed additional buses to meet the demand of our ridership,” Larson said. “We ended up purchasing six additional buses to rotate through our service in the area. That way allows us to keep our 15- to 30-minute headways during peak-time and nonpeak time and still allow us to pick up every seven minutes for the Weber State shuttle.”
Photo supplied, Utah Transit Authority
Newly painted routes for the Ogden Express bus rapid transit system run along Harrison Boulevard in this photo shared May 23, 2023.
The new buses started running in mid-December.
Larson said feedback for the service has been glowing so far.
“From our riders, it’s been nothing but positive,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of comments coming back to customer service saying how much they love the route, how quiet the buses are. A lot of residents commented in. They were really concerned; they thought the buses would be making a lot of noise in the south part of the area where we’re going through residential, and there’s been no complaints from them.”
Riders also have been giving feedback on the fact that the buses are electric and going a long way toward environmental sustainability, Larson said.
Looking to the future, Larson said connectivity between OGX and other bus routes is a major component of UTA’s five- and 10-year goals.
Rob Nielsen, Standard-Examiner
The 36th Street Ogden Express bus rapid transit station awaits passengers on Tuesday, July 11, 2023.
“What we want to do is connect more bus routes into OGX , especially on that top part by the Dee Events Center,” he said. “We’re really working hard to create that mini-hub up at the top of Harrison so that residents up on the east side of Ogden have the ability to connect into that route going into the downtown area is our ultimate goal.”
Larson said there’s a lot of confidence for OGX as the new year gets under way.
“We feel like we’ve got the right schedule, we’ve got the right number of buses, we’ve got our operators fully trained on how to run those and we’ve got our maintenance (staff) trained,” he said. “We feel like we’ve got the right formula right now to be extremely successful with OGX in 2024.”