Rail, bus ridership up

More people are riding the MTA's bus and rail lines, according to stats released today:

The number of boardings on Metro buses and rail lines increased by 5.74 percent -- or 26.6 million boardings -- from 2005 to 2006, officials with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced today. In 2005, there were about 464 million boardings systemwide. Last year, that number increased to more than 491 million. The largest increase was on Metro rail lines, which saw ridership jump 8.07 percent from 2005 to 2006. On Metro buses, ridership was up 5.28 percent. (From CNS)

Comments

[TrafficBulldog.org]

Ah the full parking lots at the Metro stations.

My point exactly. But instead of just a temporary solution for building more parking lots. Why doesn't the MTA support a real market based approach for rideshare and carpooling.

I mean there must be a price that you are willing to pay to leave your car behind and let someone else pick you up near your house and drop you at the Metro station.

We are trapped in the mindset of the government provided rideshare or carpool solution.

The government carpooling solutions that says we must work at the same location and live near each other.

Why can't our converstions and concepts of rideshare be renewed? I mean, this is 2007, can't we come up with a better mousetrap?

http://ridebay.com

has been created as a free market system for rideshare. And one of the main points is that you can get a ride one way. Think of it more like a fancy way to hitch hike.

We approached the MTA with the concept of rideshare to the Metro stations. Matt Raymond had every excuse why it could not be done. Well, maybe it cannot be done by the government and that is the problem.

Just imagine what LA will be like if you could simply find out who is going your way in the next hour, and get a ride with them.

We need to stop thinking of the train, bus or car as the whole solution to the transportation problem.

Maybe, we rideshare to the Metro Station, then hook up with the train, then get another bus or ridehshare from the next station to work.

Maybe they could all work in harmony to move us as efficiently as possible.

But, under the LA MTA ridesharing has declined more than 50%. It is time to stop the conflict of interest that exists and allows our government officials to choose Sales Tax Revenue over the public health and welfare.

When that happens, there will be plenty of parking too.

http://trafficbulldog.org is a commuter advocacy group focused on solving our freeway congestion crisis. And the tools that will solve traffic, will solve many other of the worlds problems also.

Please join the converstation on rideshare.

[mike]

OK, so when is Metro going to add a parking garage at Norwalk to increase the parking? If you get there after 7:30 you can't take the Green Line because you can't park your car in the full lot! I'm willing to bet this is a problem in other places on the train lines as well.

BTW, Metrolink needs to add one more late eastbound train to the IE, their last one isn't late enough for a lot of IE commuters into LA.

[TrafficBulldog.org]

The bottom line is this...

1.3 people per car would eliminate traffic congestion on our freeways.

MTA only spends 0.0092% of their budget on the one thing that is known to cure our freeways.

$1.2 Billion may be the "cost of operation" of the bus and rail, but shouldn't we include the cost of contstruciton of those bus and rail lines, shouldn't we include the cost of buying the trains and buses, shouldn't we include the heavy administrative overhead of the MTA? So, in the end MTA is spending $4 Billion a year and improving the commute for about 600,000 people. Accounting games can be played, but bottom line, they are spending a lot of money and not helping the freeways much.

As for the riders actually reducing freeway congestion, well last I checked LA MTA doesn't "go metro" down to Orange County or up to Ventura County. So the LA MTA system has basically zero affect on the 405 freeway problem.

Bus and rail are important to our communities, but they sure are expensive. Los Angeles has been at this for over 20 years now, and if they were making good progress, they would be able to point to success on our freeways.

People looking to take advantage of carpool lanes would dream to have the $1800 or $7000 (whatever number you like) a year spent on getting people to carpool. And as a taxpayer, I sure would like to see the most efficient use of my money.....MTA doesn't see it that way.

And here is the reason why LA Metro doesn't. Vehicle Sales taxes. The County is addicted to the sales taxes from automobile sales and gasoline sales. But ...but what about the buses and rail....people "save" use on their cars and gas.....sort of. Only carpooling represnts a true threat to sales tax revenue. That is why the federal government removed incentives for carpooling back in 1980. And due to Proposition 13 California quickly followed the Federal example. Carpooling under the MTA has dropped from 1.20 riders per car in 1980 to 1.09 riders per car today. Great job there.

If you are interested in more history of carpooling in our area

http://trafficbulldog.org/news.php?nid=4

MTA does serve a function with the buses and trains, someone needs to run them. They just need to get out of the business of providing carpool matching services. They need to pass it to the private sector where it can operate without bias or prejudice.

http://trafficbulldog.org is a commuter advocacy group working to get our freeways moving again.

[Shiela Thorne]

Actually, Metro's annual bus and rail operating budget is roughly $1.2 billion. The rest of the money goes toward highways, roads - and yes, carpool lanes.

It is true that if more of us used carpools traffic would be greatly reduced - but transit trips are equally important. Those 600,000 transit users make 1.4 million trips daily. The impact of those trips on our streets and highways is an improvement in overall traffic flow by 37%. Remember how bad traffic ws when there was a transit strike? Similar to Mr. Snoble's 1.3 people per car, if we could increase bus usage from 9% to 14% of daily commuters we would experience vast improvements on traffic flow.

The $1,800 annual cost per Metro customer pales in comparison to what the average person spends on a car each year - about $9,000 a year. And, there is less pollution, fewer accidents and clearer roads. The truth is that every alternative mode is important and that more people should take advantage of buses, trains and carpool lanes at every opportunity. I think Metro has done an outstanding job improving our system. It's up to us to use it.

More food for thought...

[James Keltz]

I think Metro has done a phenominal job over the last few years. The buses look fatastic. I love the advertising. It's amazing what a difference good communications can make for a public agency. I started riding a year ago and love it. I can't get over how many people are finally discovering that Los Angeles does have a great transit system.

[TrafficBulldog.org]

Lets put the data into perspective

From

http://metro.net/news_info/facts.htm

we see that there are about 500,000 riders on the buses and about 120,000 riders on the trains.

So for $4 Billion a year we move about 600,000 people around. Turns out we are spending about $7,000 per person per year to do "Mass Transit".

For $7000/year we could buy each of those riders a car.

Now lets look at what the MTA did not include in the latest report. Where are the numbers for carpool and rideshare?

Los Angeles MTA spends about $367,000 a year for all of the rideshare matching services. And they are affecting about 10,000 people a year. at $37 per person, rideshare and carpool are the better alternative for taxpayers.

And when there are 1.3 people per car, there is no more traffic. Roger Snoble of the MTA said so... ask him.

Don't you think the MTA could afford $40 for every driver in the County to get into Rideshare? The total bill for that would be about $80 million. Much less than the $4Billion a year that they need now. 50 times less

Food for thought.....

http://trafficbulldog.org is a commuter advocacy group commited to getting our freeways moving again.

Please join in the conversation