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Post by rubbertoe on Nov 12, 2010 14:57:00 GMT -8
All, Thought I would start a new thread that only shows the light rail ridership on a monthly basis. I will still show the graphs for all the individual lines, but only on a quarterly basis. Save the site some bandwidth. The October numbers have just been posted. The good news is that all 3 light rail lines, and even the Red Line all show YOY increases. The Orange Line was flat, a slight decrease. Combined light rail went from 132,086 up to 152,353. Note that this is the last reported month where the Gold Line YOY numbers compare to a yet unopened EE extension. Next months Gold Line numbers will therefore be compared to post-opening EE numbers. Looking ahead to then, the November 2009 Gold Line ridership was 28,478. If the October 2010 numbers hold at the current 34,400 level, then we will have a 5,922 increase in the first year of EE operation. More on that when next months numbers actually come out. Suffice it to say that since opening, the EE has attracted nicely increasing ridership over time. The MOM drop from September to October isn't particularly worrisome, as it seems to happen every year.
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Post by bluelineshawn on Nov 13, 2010 7:17:52 GMT -8
Thanks. The gold line continues to increase and might catch the green line in the next year or so and then the combined gold/green will catch the blue. Also I can't wait to see what Expo I does. It could possibly overtake the green before Expo II opens and the combined Expo I/II should gain on the blue line until this all becomes moot and the lines are realigned with the downtown connector.
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Post by bzcat on Nov 13, 2010 10:24:16 GMT -8
The network effect on full display With each new segment of rail, all the other rail lines see more riders too.
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Post by bluelineshawn on Nov 13, 2010 17:21:16 GMT -8
The network effect on full display With each new segment of rail, all the other rail lines see more riders too. Yup. Along with a confluence of other factors that will lead to booming ridership by the end of the decade.
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Post by masonite on Nov 16, 2010 11:01:34 GMT -8
All, Thought I would start a new thread that only shows the light rail ridership on a monthly basis. I will still show the graphs for all the individual lines, but only on a quarterly basis. Save the site some bandwidth. The October numbers have just been posted. The good news is that all 3 light rail lines, and even the Red Line all show YOY increases. The Orange Line was flat, a slight decrease. Combined light rail went from 132,086 up to 152,353. Note that this is the last reported month where the Gold Line YOY numbers compare to a yet unopened EE extension. Next months Gold Line numbers will therefore be compared to post-opening EE numbers. Looking ahead to then, the November 2009 Gold Line ridership was 28,478. If the October 2010 numbers hold at the current 34,400 level, then we will have a 5,922 increase in the first year of EE operation. More on that when next months numbers actually come out. Suffice it to say that since opening, the EE has attracted nicely increasing ridership over time. The MOM drop from September to October isn't particularly worrisome, as it seems to happen every year. FYI, it is not comparable to look at the Nov. 2009 and any month now for the Gold Line figures because the Eastside Extension did not open until the middle of Nov. 2009. Overall, it does appear that the Gold Line has roughly hit its 13k ridership projection, which I suppose is a good thing. However, this is a pretty low number any way you cut it, so just because it hit its projection, it isn't a cause to celebrate. The Gold Line is still a poor peformer. Phoenix's new line which is roughly the length of the Gold Line has seen over 40k in ridership. This is in a city with no little other public transit and no where near the parking and traffic problems Los Angeles has. Hopefully, the Regional Connector can solve some of the issues here and I think it will to an extent, but it won't be a panacea. It seems like people in Pasadena have a lot of excuses for not using the Gold Line. I've heard some people state that traffic is not that bad and that they couldn't get a seat a few times so they just started driving again to Downtown LA. Steve Hymon at the Source who lives in Pasadena doesn't even use it and he works at the MTA.
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Post by jamesinclair on Nov 17, 2010 18:34:12 GMT -8
Is there a way to add a line in January so that it's easier to compare yoy numbers?
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Post by wad on Nov 18, 2010 5:26:40 GMT -8
Phoenix's new line which is roughly the length of the Gold Line has seen over 40k in ridership. This is in a city with no little other public transit Phoenix has buses, which are public transit, too.
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Post by rubbertoe on Nov 18, 2010 7:25:10 GMT -8
Is there a way to add a line in January so that it's easier to compare yoy numbers? James, Not sure what you mean by this. The YOY numbers would be comparing October 2010 to October 2009. I could certainly add the column totals above the October 2009 columns that would allow you to see the YOY comparison to the most current month. Let me know if that is what you are thinking of. RT
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Post by bluelineshawn on Nov 18, 2010 7:35:47 GMT -8
Phoenix's new line which is roughly the length of the Gold Line has seen over 40k in ridership. This is in a city with no little other public transit Phoenix has buses, which are public transit, too. And fairly decent buses too. At least during rush hours. They can get you around pretty quickly...once they show up. Also I've ridden their light rail line and it hits many of their major destinations including ASU/Stadium/bars, downtown, the airport (kinda), and uptown (or whatever they call it). For such a major line to only get 40k in LA would be disappointing really. And when I rode it back in August IINM they were using 2-car consists during rush hour and not only were the trains not full, there were lots of empty seats. Close to half. It didn't appear to be as busy as the gold line, but with downtown kind of being in the middle of the line they probably just get a more balanced ridership.
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Post by masonite on Nov 18, 2010 10:57:40 GMT -8
I meant to say Phoenix has "little" other public transit, but I bungled the sentence and said "no little". They do have, it appears, about 125k riders in their system, which is pretty abysmal for the 5th biggest city in the US. As a comparison, OCTA and Las Vegas are even bigger and LADOT is just behind them in ridership.
Yes, their line does hit some key destinations, and the Gold Line doesn't so much. However, that is really my point as there are key corridors and destinations in LA that we have ignored and going forward we are expanding the Gold Line in two directions at the expense of these corridors. It is all for geographic balance and political necessity and necessary under Measure R, which is a necessary evil. I just think I would probably do things a little differently if I were king for a day.
I wonder if the Eastside Extension #2 might even be no build, because of its poor ridership projections.
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Post by metrocenter on Nov 18, 2010 11:25:47 GMT -8
Yes, their line does hit some key destinations, and the Gold Line doesn't so much. However, that is really my point as there are key corridors and destinations in LA that we have ignored and going forward we are expanding the Gold Line in two directions at the expense of these corridors. It is all for geographic balance and political necessity and necessary under Measure R, which is a necessary evil. I just think I would probably do things a little differently if I were king for a day. When it comes to approaches to planning a rapid transit system, there are two extremes. The first approach is to begin by connecting all of the "high value targets", with the goal of creating a core system that draws high ridership and encourages densification. The second approach is to begin by reaching out in a "wide net" every direction of the metropolis, with the goal of including different segments of the greater population. The problem with the "wide net" approach is, it means lower ridership per mile, and thus lower cost-effectiveness per rider. Traditionally, the first approach - focusing on the core - has been the way most major cities have built their systems. This is because back in the olden days, the city tended to have a lot of power and could largely dictate its needs. Back then, it was easier for people in the outlying areas to accept that what was good for the central city was good for them. Over time, however, the suburbs have grown in size, wealth and power. So with more recent metro-building projects (1970s forward) have tended toward the "wide net" approach, in order to get support from the suburbs. Interestingly, L.A.'s old interurban streetcar system falls into the "wide net" approach. In terms of our growing Metro Rail system, I think overall Metro has done a fairly good job of selling the need for core services first. We have a subway through Hollywood, Mid-Wilshire and Downtown. And the subway to Westwood is on its way. Crenshaw to the airport will be another piece of the core-system puzzle. I can justify the suburban extension of the Foothill Line because of its low cost, coupled with its valuable addition of the large maintenance facility in Monrovia, which will benefit the entire system. Eastside Phase 2, however, is a step in the wrong direction, IMO. It will provide little value to the system, and will serve few riders, and the riders it does serve will not benefit much over riding the bus. It will succeed only in costing a lot of money, and thus making Metro look like a wasteful money-spending machine. This is why I vote No-Build or TSM on Eastside Phase 2.
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Post by jamesinclair on Nov 18, 2010 23:04:35 GMT -8
Is there a way to add a line in January so that it's easier to compare yoy numbers? James, Not sure what you mean by this. The YOY numbers would be comparing October 2010 to October 2009. I could certainly add the column totals above the October 2009 columns that would allow you to see the YOY comparison to the most current month. Let me know if that is what you are thinking of. RT I was thinking of some way to make the calendar years more distinct so it's easier to visually compare. An example is below. I like your idea as well of having the actual number on the month a year ago. Obviously for both requests, only if it's very simple to do. Example:
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Post by rubbertoe on Dec 8, 2010 9:53:17 GMT -8
James, I will play around with that for the next monthly update. I saw today that gas prices just hit $3.22 in Los Angeles, the highest level since back in October of 2008. This should start to help the ridership numbers to some degree.
RT
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Post by LAofAnaheim on Dec 8, 2010 10:23:28 GMT -8
James, I will play around with that for the next monthly update. I saw today that gas prices just hit $3.22 in Los Angeles, the highest level since back in October of 2008. This should start to help the ridership numbers to some degree. RT Let's keep the momentum going!!!! More attention will be focused on public transit just like the glory days of summer 2008. I will never forget that Good Morning America feature when they showed how people are "clamoring to public transit". It was awesome.
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Post by metrocenter on Dec 8, 2010 11:07:23 GMT -8
Average Blue Line weekday ridership was initially projected at 5,000 during initial operations ( ref), rising to 54,000 in 2000 ( ref). Nowadays that figure hovers in the 75-80k range. On the flip side, the Gold Line to Pasadena was once projected by MTA to get 32,500 ( ref). It never did get that kind of ridership -- not until the Eastside Extension opened. * The 54,000 ridership figure was from SCAG. Note that in the paper, anti-transit hack James Moore of USC argues that this figure is inflated and faulty.
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Post by wad on Dec 9, 2010 5:38:10 GMT -8
Note that in the paper, anti-transit hack James Moore of USC argues that this figure is inflated and faulty. If he were given an investment portfolio, he'd be dangerous.
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Post by rubbertoe on Dec 14, 2010 8:24:12 GMT -8
November numbers are out, a bit of a mixed bag. Everything is down from October, but the YOY numbers are a bit better. Overall rail including the Orange Line are 306,570 versus year ago 300,069. Note that gas this month (November 1st) was $3.09, and December wasn't much higher at $3.11, but it is now trending around $3.25. This could start affecting the ridership, since that is the highest price since October 2008. We also have our first direct GLEE comparison, not taking into account whether the November 2009 ridership actually reflected the full GLEE additions since I believe it opened up in mid-November 2009. In any case, the Gold Line numbers were a steady 28k for November 2009 through January 2010. So, 33,121 now versus 28,478, for a 16.3% increase since the opening month after 1 year. If you use the pre-GLEE October 2009 number of 21,322 then the GLEE may have added 12,000+ riders after the first year. Wasn't the revised prediction something like 13,000? Metro, I like that James Moore reference. I haven't seen him pontificating against rail recently in the LA Times, but in the future this might come in handy. We should take every opportunity to bludgeon him with this bad estimate every time he shows his name in print. People making predictions have a reputation based on the accuracy of their predictions. If he missed the Blue Line so badly, why should anyone believe anything that he says now? This needs to be pointed out to any publication that puts anything he says into print. I'll read the article later since I'm pretty busy right now. Can't wait...
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Post by metrocenter on Dec 14, 2010 9:19:42 GMT -8
It will be interesting to see if the Gold Line eventually surpasses the Green Line in ridership in the next few years.
The Gold Line will have some extensions this decade (to Azusa in 2015, and to Montclair in 2019), but the Green Line has planned extensions as well (to LAX and to Torrance, dates unknown). Of course, by the end of the decade, we will have the regional connector, which will change everything.
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Post by masonite on Dec 14, 2010 9:59:54 GMT -8
You can't consider Nov. 2009 to be the first month of the GLEE, because it opened only halfway through the month. Dec. would be the first month you could make any comparison year over year in this regard. 13k was the ridership expected for it, so they are right about there (maybe a little short).
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Post by wad on Dec 15, 2010 5:30:12 GMT -8
If he missed the Blue Line so badly, why should anyone believe anything that he says now? He's a one-note musician who can play that note well.
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Post by jamesinclair on Dec 23, 2010 22:24:02 GMT -8
Thanks for adding those dotted lines, I think they make the chart much easier to look at for YoY comparisons. Hope it wasn't a bother
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Post by rubbertoe on Jan 21, 2011 11:58:32 GMT -8
December numbers are out now. They are encouraging. All 3 light rail lines finished the year with higher ridership than in December of 2009. While the numbers do trend down since September, that is always the case so probably nothing to be concerned about there. The chart shows all the numbers for the 2010 to 2009 comparison. The totals for December for all 3 lines combined in 2010 were 137,101. Back in 2009 they were 133,662 and back in 2008 they were 128,533. For the last 2 years, the Blue Line is down about 1,000, the Green Line is up about 1,000 and the Gold Line is up about 8,500 primarily due to the EE opening. The EE still seems to be attracting more riders over time. 2010 over 2009 in December was 30,804 versus 28,621 or up 7.63%. Obviously some of this is due to people still having not figured out that the EE was available back in December 2009, so going forward what we may end up seeing is the YOY increases getting progressively smaller until the Gold Line plateaus at some level like the Blue and Green seem to have. I will later today post the quarterly graphs for all the individual lines too. Since the combined graph doesn't show gas prices, I will mention that December 1st prices for the last 3 years were: 2010=$3.11, 2009=$2.92 and 2008=$1.98. The December 2008 price of $1.98 is roughly the bottoming out from the summer of 2008 spike. Looking ahead to January 2011, the price on the 1st was $3.30, so the 18 month long period where the price stabilized between $2.90 and $3.10 appears to be over. Spot price today is even above that. If that trend continues or we even hold at these levels for very long, I would expect to see ridership being affected in a positive way. Certainly looking forward to the Expo line opening, and adding that into the mix. RT
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Post by metrocenter on Jan 21, 2011 13:30:43 GMT -8
Monthly and seasonal patterns correlate with weather and gas prices. But longer-term trends have more to do with the economy (recession means fewer transit trips). Over very long time periods, transit usage is affected by land-use patterns.
The change in Blue Line ridership is less than .5%, really not signficant at all. For the Green Line, it's 3%, a good improvement.
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Post by metrocenter on Jan 21, 2011 13:41:47 GMT -8
As for the Gold Line, the nearly 8% increase is mostly about user acceptance of the new line, I think.
What would be really interesting would be see the percent increases year over year for the first 12 months of operations of the Gold Line Eastside extension. So Dec 09 over Dec 08, Jan 10 over Jan 09, etc. This would give a good indication of where the ridership is going to stabilize.
Judging from the graphs, it looks like the EE has added about 13,000 new riders to the line, in its first year of operation.
According to the EIR, the extension is supposed to have 16,000 boardings by 2020. So it's not doing too badly.
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Post by jdrcrasher on Jan 22, 2011 3:38:36 GMT -8
According to the EIR, the extension is supposed to have 16,000 boardings by 2020. So it's not doing too badly. Does that finding include the connection to the Expo Line once the regional connector is completed?
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Post by metrocenter on Jan 22, 2011 7:13:37 GMT -8
According to the EIR, the extension is supposed to have 16,000 boardings by 2020. So it's not doing too badly. Does that finding include the connection to the Expo Line once the regional connector is completed? EIR projected ridership only takes into account approved projects. The Regional Connector wasn't even on the radar in 2001, when the GLEE SEIR was being completed. So I'm not sure how they would have included it in the projections.
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Post by rubbertoe on Feb 14, 2011 15:31:35 GMT -8
Whoa, January numbers were just posted, and they are quite impressive. The December to January transition usually only goes up a few thousand at most. This year the increase is ~25,000. That also includes the Red and Orange lines. The total ridership of all 5 combined is 319,297 which is up a very hefty 8.71% from a year earlier. If you take the light rail lines only, the increase is from 137,101 to 154,547. The YOY increase from January 2010 goes from 134,346 to the now 154,547. The lines not shown: Red Line up about ~10,000 and Orange Line down about ~3,000. I see that gas (not shown in this chart) also shot up from $3.11 to $3.30 those same two months, so maybe the gas effect is factoring into the early summer run up in ridership. It doesn't seem like the job numbers alone would justify this level of increase. For those interested in Gold Line YOY increases now that the EE has been open for 15 full months, here is the raw data. The YOY increases for the Gold Line are as follows: Nov-10: +4,643 Dec-10: +2,183 Jan-11: +5,720 In essence, the Gold Line continues to draw even more riders every month in the year since it has been open versus the previous year. The seasonal aspect of this should be factored in since I am comparing YOY numbers for the months in question. RT
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Post by jeisenbe on Feb 14, 2011 18:19:36 GMT -8
That's an impressive jump. Did Metro change the way it counts riders? Did a bunch of students decide to take transit this semester? Was the weather really that great? Or is the economy taking off, behind our backs?
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Post by rubbertoe on Feb 14, 2011 18:23:32 GMT -8
I'm guessing that it must be that all the light rail NIMBY's were taking the trains to the various MTA meetings to protest the expansion of the rail system
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Post by ieko on Feb 14, 2011 18:42:10 GMT -8
I'd say gas, I know it's the primary reason I've been using something like 90% transit lately.
Is it possible to throw in Silver Line data in there?
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