More MTA ridership numbers

As the previous post stated, MTA rail ridership went up 6% in May 2008 over May 2007. Here are the total boardings for the individual rail lines and the Orange Line busway in the San Fernando Valley.

Red Line & Purple Line subway
May 2008: 3,825,866
May 2007: 3,526,205

Gold Line
May 2008: 628,451 (a record)
May 2007: 529,577

Green Line
May 2008: 1,030,664
May 2007: 1,056,993

Blue Line
May 2008: 2,140,559
May 2007: 2,079,398

Orange Line:
May 2008: 639,563
May 2007: 631,087

MTA spokesman Marc Littman said that bus ridership was down more than 5% from May of '08 to May of '07. The MTA believes that rail is luring more people from their cars, but that bus trips are down because daily passes went from $3 to $5 last summer and more people are forgoing discretionary trips to save a couple of dollars.

On the rail side, I asked Littman if the MTA had any plans to add trains or more cars -- given that many trains are standing-room-only at rush hour. He said that at this time, there are no plans to do so. He also said that there would be few cars to spare on the Gold Line later this year as the agency hopes to begin testing in the fall on the eastside extension, which is scheduled to open next year.

--Steve Hymon

Comments

[zz ziled]

Steve Hymon, LA Times transportation reporter and blogger for this LA Bottleneck site spoke today on Roy Ulrich's programme: "Morning Review Friday" on KPFK-FM 90.7 FM about the local politician in-fighting and turf battling over current legislation and measure AB2321 and Measure R.

Listen to Podcast link from KPFK @:

http://www.kpfk.org/programs/129-morningreviewfridaywroyulrich.html

[William Riel]

Responding to the 6/18 article on the proposed Gold Line extension to Montclair, the mention of 23,000 riders per month is clearly incorrect. 23,000 per day sounds more accurate. Those 1,000 cars filling the Sierra Madre Villa parking structure by 8:45 each morning don't arrive empty.

Beyond that, though, as a rider of the Gold Line who oftens stands for most of the evening commute, I suggest that the MTA doesn't have an accurate method of measuring ridership on the Gold Line. I have a TAP card, and so they can track me now (if I actually tap the card for each ride), but many riders still have monthly passes that are not recorded at the stations or aboard the trains. When you buy a monthly pass, MTA has no way of tracking where or how many times you use it. You could be on a bus, or you could be riding the Gold Line from morning until night. They don't know.

"628,451" for May 2008 then sounds like an accurate figure, but what is it based on? Not tickets taken or sold, which is only a portion of the ridership. There are no turnstiles counting riders. It misses all the monthly passes and probably throws in some approximation to factor in the unlimited use day passes, which, once purchased, you simply keep in your pocket no matter where you go. It's an estimate, and in my view were the real figure known, "628,451" would be shown to be of little use in gauging how many people were actually riding the Gold Line recently.

One consequence of this, beyond the continued reporting in the media of the "underperformance" of the line, would be that MTA will be slow to respond to increases in ridership, as they will need to rely mainly on driver reports and complaints of overcrowding. Anyone who rides the line regularly, though, will tell you that the cars are often crowded beyond actual capacity, particularly in the evening hours. The line goes from two-car trains to one-car trains after 8pm, you don't want to be on that first one-car train out of Union Station if you can help it.

[Ken Sterling]

The next time you talk to Mr. Littman you might ask him about the new transit cars at the Gold Line yard next to the LA river. The last time I went by the yard, there about twelve brand new silver-sidded cars on the property. They remind me of the the Chicago transit cars except these are longer and articulated. I haven't seen them mentioned anywhere yet even thou I have seen them in service several times.

Ken C.

[Bart Reed]

I am not so sure the Green Line Ridership went down.
Here is the average daily ridership for 2008:
Jan-08--34,979
Feb-08--35,662
Mar-08--38,909
Apr-08-- 38,941
May-08--39,173
These five months look like a trend up to me.
See the Metro complete ridership document to understand the mass of data provided: http://thetransitcoalition.us/Metro%20Ridership.htm

[Anthony Fernandez]

They could increase frequency on the Gold Line, but it would only be temporary because the trains that they have are meant to fill the gap since the trains will be going further once the Eastside Extension is completed.

Any idea on why only the Green Line's numbers went down?

[M]

Do you know anything about them not taking off the extra cars from the red line trains in the evenings? I think it's somewhere around 7pm that they start running the shorter trains between Union Station and North Hollywood and they are always jammed. The obviously have the cars, they just remove them.

I hope that the problem is that they don't have the extra cars/trains right now, not that they can't increase the number of cars/frequency of trains in the future.....