DART posted its best ridership numbers ever in June, when more Dallas-area passengers used its buses, trains and HOV lanes than ever before.

The increases were felt across the board. There were more trips recorded for light rail, commuter rail and buses in June, DART said Thursday. And in a change, the increases went beyond the higher weekday totals that have been seen in recent months. Ridership was up on weekdays, Saturdays and Sundays.

The Trinity Railway Express, the commuter line between Dallas and Fort Worth that DART operates jointly with Fort Worth’s transportation agency, provided 251,000 rides in June. That’s 31,000 more than in May and nearly 45,000 more than a year before.

The number of light rail passengers increased, too. In June, those riders took 1.69 million trips on DART, about 200,000 more than June, 2007, and about 100,000 more than an already busy May, 2008.

Average weekday totals for light rail — about 70,000 trips a day - and for TRE — about 11,000 trips a day — were each the highest numbers in DART history.

Rail ridership has been trending up for months, as commuters recoiled at the idea of paying $4 or more for gasoline. Weekday ridership has been sharply up, but the overall increases have tended to be more modest.

In addition, bus ridership — by far the biggest share of DART’s customers — had not increased so steadily. Indeed, May bus numbers were down from a year before.

But that changed, too, in June. Though about 3,000 fewer bus trips were made in June than in May, the June figure was still up 6 percent, or 220,000 trips, than June, 2007. DART buses provided some 3.8 million trips for the month.

Counting the 4.5 million passengers DART said were in vehicles using the HOV lanes, the total DART ridership for June was 10.3 million — the highest total ever for the 25-year old agency.

DART has steadily expanded its network of HOV lanes in the past year, however, making year-to-year comparisons that include HOV riders less useful than apples-to-apples comparisons of bus and rail ridership, for instance.

DART released the numbers after agency president Gary Thomas alluded to the double-digit increase for rail ridership to group of officials from Fort Worth who had traveled by train to see the Mockingbird Station development in Dallas.