CTfastrak is Connecticut's bus rapid transit system.

CTfastrak isn’t just a road for buses.  It is a system of routes that uses the bus-only roadway for all or a portion of the trip. It is overlaid on the existing CTtransit bus system. CTfastrak buses are able to exit the bus-only road at certain locations to deliver people directly to their destination. 

When buses get to Hartford, they don’t stop at Union Station and turn around. Some routes exit at Sigourney Street Station and circulate along Sigourney, Farmington, Asylum, and around downtown. Other routes exit at Union station and do a smaller loop through the downtown area. One of the routes exits at Sigourney and turns towards Capitol Avenue first, then up Main street and across to East Hartford and Manchester.

For more information, please visit www.cttransit.com/ctfastrak, follow us on Twitter @ctfastrak or find us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ctfastrak.

Ridership

CTfastrak began operations on March 28, 2015. To promote the new service and encourage trial use, no fare was charged for the first nine days of service.

CTfastrak was designed as a "proof of payment" system which includes all-door boarding at stations to reduce dwell times and improve operational efficiency. Vehicles used in CTfastrak service include state of the art Automatic Passenger Counting (APC) technology to accurately measure passenger boarding and alighting. 

Ridership figures for April, 2015 should not be used in trend analysis due to the free trial period and some start-up issues surrounding the calibration of the automatic passenger counters.

Because there was bus service in the corridor between New Britain and Hartford prior to CTfastrak, it would be misleading to claim all the riders on CTfastrak are due to the new system.  Therefore we report all the ridership in the corridor, but those ridership figures should be compared to ridership on the routes that existed prior to CTfastrak, which averaged between 8,000 and 9,000 passengers trips on an average weekday.