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Post by rubbertoe on Oct 13, 2011 6:00:22 GMT -8
September 2011 numbers: 152,706 This is up a bit over 3% YOY. But, the primary news from the last 3 months has been the July 2011 peak of 171,163. This beat the previous high by over 8,500. The GLEE opened in November of 2009. No matter how hard I look at the Red Line numbers, it is hard to see any appreciable increase that could be from the GLEE. For example, here are the first 9 months average ridership for 2009 (before GLEE opening), compared to 2010 and then 2011. 2009 (before GLEE): 151,773 2010: 151,348 2011: 151,396 So, despite Gold Line increasing from 28,000 to 38,000, the Red Line is stable. If I had to guess, I would say that the recession is probably the reason. While some number of the 10,000 Gold Line riders are obviously boarding the Red Line, this is probably offset by fewer Red Line riders in general.
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Post by carter on Oct 13, 2011 8:45:38 GMT -8
Thanks Rubbertoe! I'm not asking you do to this -- because it's a bit of a heavy lift -- but I'm curious how these ridership numbers look against the unemployment rate, which tends to have a stronger depressing effect on ridership as gas prices.
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Post by rubbertoe on Oct 13, 2011 9:47:40 GMT -8
Thanks Rubbertoe! I'm not asking you do to this -- because it's a bit of a heavy lift -- but I'm curious how these ridership numbers look against the unemployment rate, which tends to have a stronger depressing effect on ridership as gas prices. No heavy lifting required, besides, I have a bad back I think a better comparison would be to look at the "employment rate" versus "unemployment rate". Or even better the actual number of people employed, since some % of the people who are employed would be riding the trains to work. Here is a site I found that shows the LA area: 1)employed, 2) unemployed, and 3) the unemployment rate: www.calmis.ca.gov/htmlfile/county/losangel.htmYou want to follow the link that says "Labor Force Data (Excel)" and then look at the numbers. Some good stuff there. For example here are the Employed numbers for the last several years for LA-Long Beach-Glendale: Jan-08 4,593,900 Feb-08 4,625,600 Mar-08 4,619,300 Apr-08 4,608,300 May-08 4,572,000 Jun-08 4,545,800 Jul-08 4,558,800 Aug-08 4,531,100 Sep-08 4,538,700 Oct-08 4,550,700 Nov-08 4,528,000 Dec-08 4,486,500 Jan-09 4,397,800 Feb-09 4,408,000 Mar-09 4,385,600 Apr-09 4,390,800 May-09 4,357,900 Jun-09 4,334,700 Jul-09 4,324,700 Aug-09 4,297,100 Sep-09 4,281,200 Oct-09 4,283,300 Nov-09 4,305,300 Dec-09 4,273,000 Jan-10 4,227,800 Feb-10 4,270,500 Mar-10 4,274,400 Apr-10 4,284,800 May-10 4,261,200 Jun-10 4,233,700 Jul-10 4,241,300 Aug-10 4,256,900 Sep-10 4,279,700 Oct-10 4,268,500 Nov-10 4,270,900 Dec-10 4,277,400 Jan-11 4,271,000 Feb-11 4,287,500 Mar-11 4,262,800 Apr-11 4,321,500 May-11 4,284,500 Jun-11 4,237,700 Jul-11 4,215,600 Aug-11 4,247,900 Note that while the unemployment rate during this period (Jan 2008 to August 2011) went from 6.2% to 12.7%, the number of people actually working only dropped from 4.593 million to 4.247 million, about 350,000 fewer workers. Since the Red Line ridership has been very stable from about the middle of 2008 until even now, it would seem like a greater % of the people who are still working are riding transit. You would think that rising and falling employment would correlate with rising and falling transit use pretty closely, but this looks like a case where that isn't whats happening. Several others have commented before that there are a lot of things that factor into the ridership equation. Obviously the number of people working is important, and I chose to graph ridership versus gas prices because gas prices started skyrocketing and I was curious to see if that correlated to higher ridership. Seasonal patterns also play a very big role, and that varies between the lines too. Orange Line spikes during September, others spike in July. If you were to plot the "employed count" versus the ridership you would see a slightly declining value for the employed while the ridership stays basically flat except for possibly seasonal variations. Looking at the number of bus riders might give a better correlation with the "employed count", since more people take the bus than ride the trains. I don't track the bus ridership though. A quick look at the MTA stats show bus ridership down about 30,000 from 2009 to 2011. RT
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Post by masonite on Nov 20, 2011 15:27:17 GMT -8
Article on criminals using the subway as a getaway. Reminds me of the Hancock Park and Beverly Hill's rants in the 80s about the subway. Anyway, I would think this should be pretty easy to stop as people in a subway have to go through set points and are on camera I believe. Anyway, we have to do a better job of security on our system even if the crime is considered more perception than reality. Once people feel unsafe, ridership will be hurt. www.dailynews.com/news/ci_19370830
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Post by bluelineshawn on Nov 20, 2011 15:54:01 GMT -8
Lots of bad publicity lately regarding Metro trains and crime. I wonder if part of their motivation is to suggest that the LASD isn't doing their job? IOW "If the LASD were catching these fare evaders like they were supposed to, we wouldn't be seeing this crime increase."
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Post by James Fujita on Nov 21, 2011 15:05:11 GMT -8
Lots of bad publicity lately regarding Metro trains and crime. I wonder if part of their motivation is to suggest that the LASD isn't doing their job? IOW "If the LASD were catching these fare evaders like they were supposed to, we wouldn't be seeing this crime increase." Really though, the LASD's job shouldn't be to catch fare evaders. That should be entirely separate from catching criminals. Fare gates/ turnstiles/ station attendants for the fare evaders. LASD should be watching for suspicious behavior. Purse snatchers and pickpockets, malicious loitering, unwatched bags, people matching description of APB on the scanner. The only time crime and fare evasion should meet is if somebody does both: commit a crime, then do something noticeably stupid like fare evasion. Al Capone was caught for tax evasion.
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Post by jamesinclair on Nov 21, 2011 17:08:00 GMT -8
Fare evasion is a crime. It's theft. It's the cops job.
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Post by James Fujita on Nov 21, 2011 18:49:37 GMT -8
To clarify: it is a crime, but it isn't a crime that needs to be handled by the LASD.
It's a question of priorities and efficiency. If the fare checking job can be handed off to a machine, then the LASD is free to look out for the more serious threats to passenger safety.
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Post by bluelineshawn on Nov 21, 2011 19:46:17 GMT -8
Lots of bad publicity lately regarding Metro trains and crime. I wonder if part of their motivation is to suggest that the LASD isn't doing their job? IOW "If the LASD were catching these fare evaders like they were supposed to, we wouldn't be seeing this crime increase." Really though, the LASD's job shouldn't be to catch fare evaders. That should be entirely separate from catching criminals. Fare gates/ turnstiles/ station attendants for the fare evaders. LASD should be watching for suspicious behavior. Purse snatchers and pickpockets, malicious loitering, unwatched bags, people matching description of APB on the scanner. The only time crime and fare evasion should meet is if somebody does both: commit a crime, then do something noticeably stupid like fare evasion. Al Capone was caught for tax evasion. I disagree because the reality is that the fare evaders are often the same ones committing the crimes. Also detaining/ticketing fare evaders is not the job of station attendants. We don't have any yet, but when we do I really doubt that they will be detaining fare evaders. They will call the police responsible for safety.
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Post by LAofAnaheim on Nov 21, 2011 20:25:26 GMT -8
To clarify: it is a crime, but it isn't a crime that needs to be handled by the LASD. It's a question of priorities and efficiency. If the fare checking job can be handed off to a machine, then the LASD is free to look out for the more serious threats to passenger safety. Sorry James, but nothing everything is fool proof. LASD will NEVER capture 100% of criminals. Never. So far LASD has done an astounding job over the life of Metro rail. Any other metro rail system in a large city like LA have that low of a crime rate in 20 years? I've seen more criminal activity at London Underground and NY subway than LASD. I know you're not saying that criminal activity will never be fool proof, but by fare checking, they're also helping to prevent would-be criminals ride our system. Until the gates are locked, LASD has to perform double-duty and it truly is doing the best it can over the years.
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Post by bluelineshawn on Nov 21, 2011 21:10:39 GMT -8
So far LASD has done an astounding job over the life of Metro rail. I can't agree with that assessment. Going only by the crime and violence that I have personally witnessed, I'd say that they do a very poor job. Response time to violent situations is incredibly long and they do not ride enough of the trains, especially on the blue line. Remember the stabbing reports of them taking over 10 minutes to get to the murder scene at Hollywood/Vine? That's not only not astounding, it's unacceptable. The fact that crime is relatively low is coincidental to crime in general dropping in the LA area and is certainly not do to any astounding performance by the LASD. And I'm not necessarily blaming the LASD. Maybe they don't get paid enough to do any more than they do now. And if that's the case, Metro really needs to look at giving the contract back to LAPD given that the LAPD already polices most of their busiest territory. And speaking of the contract, how in the world has that not been finalized for several years? Metro keeps extending the contract for a few months rather than work a new contract or go out for bid. I think that it's been around 2 years of that.
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Post by James Fujita on Nov 21, 2011 23:58:51 GMT -8
First of all, I think we are asking too much of anybody when we demand perfection from them. That's ridiculous. Should they do a good job? Yes. Should we expect superhuman abilities? No.
The whole contract thing is a side issue, at least as far as this topic is concerned. I don't know if the Sheriff's or the LAPD is better at the job of protecting subway passengers, but whoever has the contract should be concentrating on preventing stabbings, robberies, etc. rather than fare evasion.
I do agree that fare evaders are probably likely to be criminals in other aspects. Station attendants will have to coordinate with police/ sheriffs. Maybe they can't detain people, but they should at least be able to radio in: "hey, I just saw a guy run into the station, and I think he hopped over a fare gate. Here's his description." Even better, if budgets allow, have both transit police AND station attendants at the stations.
[ EDIT: Yeah, I know I'm no security expert. I'll leave the details up to the experts, but the point is, there should be some division of labor. ]
Of course, that's not the situation such as it exists now, and for the time being, LASD or LAPD will have to continue fare checking. However, in the future all of the gates need to be locked and station attendants ought to be hired.
When that happens, there is no reason why LAPD/ LASD can't leave the basic fare checking, passenger help job to the station attendants and the gates; with some obvious overlap between providing security and catching fare evaders.
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Post by spokker on Nov 29, 2011 23:59:06 GMT -8
The article is fear-mongering but I thought I'd point this out. And we want to get rid of the proof-of-payment system why? Do you think the guy who commits crimes and heads to the subway is going to not hop over the turnstile? Oh, a security guy might happen to see him jump the turnstile on the many cameras, if he's looking at the right camera feed at the right time. No, I want the officers interacting with passengers and checking fares instead of soulless gates and cameras. My beef with LASD is with regard to photography in the subway, but they should be checking fares. It is not beneath them and screw them if they think it is.
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Post by rubbertoe on Jan 19, 2012 7:44:56 GMT -8
December quarterly update: November saw the introduction of 10 minute service running all the way to Midnight on both the Red/Purple Lines and the Blue Line. So, between the Wilshire/Vermont station and Union Station, you are actually seeing 5 minute headways during that period. Thats quite a service level for that segment given the hours, and they run it 7 days a week, even on holidays. Going forward we will see if it produces a significant ridership increase for what has been a fairly stable and mature line. December 2011 versus 2010 showed 141,680 compared to 133,099. So it looks to be off to a good start. RT
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Post by rubbertoe on Apr 26, 2012 6:46:08 GMT -8
March quarterly update: The first quarter of 2012 average of 148,264 shows a nice improvement over the 2011 first quarter of 143,705. The 10 minute service to midnight may be drawing more riders, but the first quarter is generally a period of increasing ridership so its hard to make a solid case. Very soon now we may begin to see the "Expo Effect", when some of the Expo riders start using the Red Line. RT
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Post by rubbertoe on Jul 19, 2012 6:23:59 GMT -8
June quarterly update: The second quarter average daily ridership for 2012 was 155,059 compared to the 2011 average of 149,425. Each month had higher levels than 2011. Concerning the Expo effect, lets take a look at each of the previous 6 months to see how much the levels have gone up since the previous year: Jan: +1,220 Feb: +4,793 Mar: +7,664 Apr: +1,860 May: +7,507 Jun: +7,535 The May/June 7,500+ bump is nice to see, though the March increase does seem to show that it isn't necessarily the Expo Line making the primary contribution. I'll track this next quarter too. RT
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Post by bzcat on Jul 31, 2012 9:30:58 GMT -8
This is combined red and purple line ridership or just the red line?
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Post by bluelineshawn on Jul 31, 2012 10:59:19 GMT -8
Combined.
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Post by rubbertoe on Nov 9, 2012 7:26:06 GMT -8
September quarterly update: Quarterly average of 153,758 versus the 2011 quarter of 161,057. And 2010 was 151,033. The big July 2011 ridership high skews the data a bit. One interesting thing to point out in the data. If you look at the normal July-September period, the numbers always trail off for those months. In all the data that I have, this is the only time other than 2007 when the September ridership was higher than the July ridership. It is typically much lower. I also added a label for May 2012 being the Expo opening. This could be why there is the uptrend, also possibly the later night service, or some combination. RT
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Post by rubbertoe on May 11, 2013 5:29:25 GMT -8
I had some time this morning, and noticed that I missed the end of year update, so I will resume starting with the March 2013 numbers since we are about to get the April numbers any day now. For the quarter ended December 2013, the average ridership was 158,252 versus 142,593 in the previous years quarter. This is the first 4th quarter that the Expo Line has been open. For the quarter ended March 2013, the average ridership was 158,282 versus 148,264. The most striking thing about the graph when you look at it is that the normal winter slump completely went away. The Expo Line opening in May 2012 is clearly one of the contributing factors here, as we remain steady at just under the recent June 2012 level. If the expected summer ramp happens, we could easily see the 171,163 record broken this year. RT
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