Ridership on NRoute’s buses for the first two months of the new fiscal year were up over the same period for fiscal 2011, NRoute Transportation Commission members were told Wednesday.

NRoute’s statistics are based on its fiscal year, which runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30.

NRoute executive director Evelyn Bumpers said ridership numbers for October and November totaled 6,393, 175 more than the previous October and November. Fares also were up by $598, $7,137, compared with $6,539 for the same period in 2011.

The news came during a discussion of ridership during fiscal 2011, which fell by about 29 percent from fiscal 2010.

According to the transportation system’s statistics, 35,242 people rode buses during fiscal 2011, 14,370 less than the 49,612 people who used NRoute during the previous fiscal year. Bumpers added that fares were also down about $13,615 from 2010.

She credited some of the early fiscal 2012 ridership increase to recent changes in NRoute’s bus routes, which the commission approved in late October. The new routes went into effect on Nov. 1.

The route changes dropped several stops and added new ones, including the Warren County Health Department on Monroe Street, four stops on Clay Street, including a stop at the MEA medical clinic, and stops at medical clinics on Mission 66 and South Frontage Road and Warren-Yazoo Mental Health Services on Wisconsin Avenue.

NRoute officials said some of the changes were part of a move to target more of the city’s medical clinics as stops for passengers. The Clay Street stops were added at the request of residents in the areas along Clay, Bumpers said.

In other action, the commissioners:

• Approved the financial report.

• Set the Christmas and New Year’s holidays at Dec. 23 and 26 for Christmas, and Dec. 30 and Jan. 2 for New Year’s. Bumpers said buses would run until 4 p.m. on Dec. 23 and Dec. 30. They will not run on Dec. 26 or Jan. 2.

• Discussed replacing commissioners Dianne Gawronski and Rose Carson. Gawronski recently resigned after her husband, Vicksburg Convention Center director Larry Gawronski, took a similar job in Otumwa, Iowa. Carson resigned last December, Bumpers said.

Commissioners serve staggered terms and are appointed by the Vicksburg Board of Mayor and Aldermen. No candidates were named.