APTA Quarterly Transit Ridership Reports

[Smuttynose1]

The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) Quarterly Ridership reports are a great resource in that they report current transit ridership and trends nationwide in a single document. The 2nd Quarter 2012 report was just released, and future reports can also be summarized here.

Here's some of the highlights from the most recent report (2nd Quarter, 2012).

Among large transit cities (those with at least 350K daily trips), these cities reported the largest year-to-date percentage gains:

NEWARK +5.4%
BOSTON +5.37%
SAN FRANCISCO +4.79%
CHICAGO +4.49%

Among large transit cities, these cities reported the largest drops:

ATLANTA -4.14%
PHILADELPHIA -0.75%

Among medium-sized transit cities (those with between 125K and 349K daily trips) these cities reported the largest year-to-date percentage gains:

SAINT LOUIS +9.05%
PITTSBURGH +7.53%
SALT LAKE CITY +6.78%

MILWAUKEE -1.59% was the only mid-sized agency to report a ridership decline.

There are so many small transit agencies, it's difficult to categorize them, but New Orleans (+13.17%), Indianapolis (+12.2%) and Kansas City (+8.93%) did well, while Tacoma (-16.5%) and Cincinnati (-8.96%) struggled.

Here's a link to the report: http://www.apta.com/resources/statis...rship-APTA.pdf

[MayorOfChicago]

I'm shocked at how much it keeps increasing here on the trains. It's getting overwhelming at rush hour.

Ridership:

1996 412,000
2000 491,000 (+79,000 +19%)
2004 487,000 (-4,000 -1%)
2008 650,000 (+163,000 +33%)
2012 737,000 (+87,000 +13%)

[afiggatt]

Originally Posted by Smuttynose1

The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) Quarterly Ridership reports are a great resource in that they report current transit ridership and trends nationwide in a single document. The 2nd Quarter 2012 report was just released, and future reports can also be summarized here.

Here's some of the highlights from the most recent report (2nd Quarter, 2012).

Among large transit cities (those with at least 350K daily trips), these cities reported the largest year-to-date percentage gains:

If I may, I just want to point out that the transit ridership gain percentages you posted are for the entire city or metropolitan regional systems, combining all the transit modes. For Boston, that includes the T (both heavy rails and the Green line trolleys), the trolley buses, the commuter trains, the regular buses, and even the ferry boats. The APTA report breaks out the numbers by transit mode which does provide info on if there were shifts between rapid transit vs bus modes for example and comparisons between metro systems.

The 2nd quarter report is interesting because there were some significant shifts in growth numbers from the 1st quarter. While most transit systems saw growth, SEPTA took a hit across the board for all modes with June showing the biggest drop year to year. What happened in Philly?

Among the major heavy rail metro systems, the NY subway (+4.39%), Chicago L (+6.56%), and BART (+7.93%) all show solid growth for the first 6 months of the year. Meanwhile MARTA (-7.97% for the 2nd qtr) took a big hit. Miami Metrorail shows a small drop for the 2nd qtr (-0.35%), but the new airport station opened in July (IIRC), so the 3rd quarter report should show the early effects of providing airport access for what had been a single line Metro.

[Nexis4Jersey]

I'm not even sure how septa counts ridership , they still use tokens , don't have any ticket machines and don't have any rail counters....so the decrease could be an error.

[Ch.G, Ch.G]

What's the deal with Atlanta?

[LMich]

Originally Posted by Ch.G, Ch.G

What's the deal with Atlanta?

Service cuts, last year, and a failed tax expanion, this year. I think there is a thread in this subforum with more background on the issue. MARTA has an inherently flawed funding mechanism. It gets no funding from the State of Georgia; it relies on a local sales tax.

That said, here in Michigan, DDOT looks to have had the worst drop-off over the previous year's second quarter. In Detroit's case, it has to do with DDOT being even worse off than MARTA in that it is literally a city department that has to be funded by the general fund of a city that can't possibly pay for its transit in a state that is sharing less and less revenue with its municipalities leading to massive service cuts. It almost makes MARTA look functional.

[afiggatt]

Originally Posted by Nexis4Jersey

I'm not even sure how septa counts ridership , they still use tokens , don't have any ticket machines and don't have any rail counters....so the decrease could be an error.

SEPTA's commuter rail system does not use tokens. For that I expect they count tickets sold and collected to estimate ridership. For the subway, trolley lines, just count the tokens deposited for total passengers. APTA counts "unlinked" trips, so SEPTA - just like MTA in NYC - can't directly count the number of connecting trains passengers take, but they can keep statistics on percentages of passengers who do with market and station surveys and apply that to the reports they submit to APTA.

The APTA statistics report says Estimated Unlinked Transit Passenger Trips, so these are not exact numbers. But if the methodology is not changed, the
numbers will show the growth or decline trends in ridership. So what happened at SEPTA that every transit mode showed a marked decline in ridership in the second quarter, while in the first quarter, all the modes were up in ridership except for a -5.5% drop for the trolley system? I don't recall reading about service cuts for SEPTA, so I have to wonder if there was an accounting error and SEPTA provided erroneous numbers to APTA. Pittsburgh, for example, with all the financial problems the transit system is having, had a 21.2% increase in light rail ridership in the 2nd quarter.

For some systems, such as MARTA and some city bus systems, there have been service cuts, severe cuts in some cases, so the decline in ridership for those systems is not surprising.

One thought stuck me reading the APTA report about the dominance in ridership numbers for the NYC subway system is that if we add up the unlinked transit trips of all the light rail and all the other heavy rail Metro systems across the US, the total is still less than the NYC subway system ridership. As more light rail systems & lines are built and expand along with some expansions of heavy rail transit (Silver Line for WMATA, BART, LA), eventually I think the totals of all the other rail transit systems will catch up to NYC. But NYC is not standing still, showing remarkable growth over the past 10-15 years and expanding the system.

[Ch.G, Ch.G]

Originally Posted by LMich

Service cuts, last year, and a failed tax expanion, this year. I think there is a thread in this subforum with more background on the issue. MARTA has an inherently flawed funding mechanism. It gets no funding from the State of Georgia; it relies on a local sales tax.

Originally Posted by afiggatt

For some systems, such as MARTA and some city bus systems, there have been service cuts, severe cuts in some cases, so the decline in ridership for those systems is not surprising.

I'm flabbergasted that a metropolitan area that has experienced such precipitous growth over the past decade would make those kinds of service cuts.

[LosAngelesSportsFan]

Here are the August numbers for LA Bus and Rail... Blue line LRT goes over 92,000 daily boardings, Orange Line BRT passes 27,000, Expo close to 20,000, and overall numbers are way up

http://thesource.metro.net/2012/09/1...rship-numbers/


Metro August ridership numbers
Posted on September 19, 2012 by Steve Hymon
Comments: 2 Replies
Categories: Inside Metro, Policy & Funding
Tags: August, Blue Line, Metro, ridership
Bookmark the permalink

Here are the latest ridership numbers across the Metro system.

The average weekday ridership for the Blue Line (92,006 boardings) and the new Expo Line (19,776) were the highest ever. The Orange Line had its second-best average to date (27,513) and the Green Line its third-best month ever (45,536).

Below are the July numbers, which on the rail side are tabulated over the prior several months and then crunched to come up with the monthly numbers:

Bus – Directly Operated
AUG. 2012 AUG. 2011 AUG. 2010
Average Weekday Boardings 1,074,951 1,048,258 1,050,267
Average Saturday Boardings 723,663 728,213 725,903
Average Sunday and Holiday Boardings 552,120 547,722 538,147
Total Calendar Month Boardings 29,827,005 29,213,674 28,700,221
Directly operated bus ridership includes Orange and Silver Line ridership.

Bus – Contract
AUG. 2012 AUG. 2011 AUG. 2010
Average Weekday Boardings 45,836 41,327 42,870
Average Saturday Boardings 26,702 24,266 24,838
Average Sunday and Holiday Boardings 20,881 18,727 18,660
Total Calendar Month Boardings 1,244,551 1,122,490 1,135,790
Bus – Systemwide
AUG. 2012 AUG. 2011 AUG. 2010
Average Weekday Boardings 1,120,787 1,089,585 1,093,137
Average Saturday Boardings 750,365 752,479 750,741
Average Sunday and Holiday Boardings 573,001 566,449 556,807
Total Calendar Month Boardings 31,071,556 30,336,164 29,836,011
Directly operated bus ridership includes Orange and Silver Line ridership.


Orange Line
AUG. 2012 AUG. 2011 AUG. 2010
Average Weekday Boardings 27,513 22,977 21,694
Average Saturday Boardings 17,776 14,187 13,880
Average Sunday and Holiday Boardings 13,601 11,420 10,666
Total Calendar Month Boardings 758,307 630,899 586,118
Silver Line
AUG. 2012 AUG. 2011 AUG. 2010
Average Weekday Boardings 11,449 9,730 7,487
Average Saturday Boardings 4,441 3,825 2,811
Average Sunday and Holiday Boardings 3,168 2,517 1,919
Total Calendar Month Boardings 293,763 249,158 185,553


Rail Ridership Estimates
Red/Purple Line
AUG. 2012 AUG. 2011 AUG. 2010
Average Weekday Boardings 154,025 159,302 150,435
Average Saturday Boardings 90,817 100,728 101,190
Average Sunday and Holiday Boardings 79,423 80,785 82,843
Total Calendar Month Boardings 4,223,540 4,389,998 4,128,552
Blue Line
AUG. 2012 AUG. 2011 AUG. 2010
Average Weekday Boardings 92,006 82,189 81,126
Average Saturday Boardings 65,686 57,645 52,018
Average Sunday and Holiday Boardings 54,087 47,924 49,006
Total Calendar Month Boardings 2,595,229 2,312,624 2,237,870
Blue Line estimates do not include Expo boardings.

Expo Line
AUG. 2012
Average Weekday Boardings 19,776
Average Saturday Boardings 12,569
Average Sunday and Holiday Boardings 10,722
Total Calendar Month Boardings 548,009
Green Line
AUG. 2012 AUG. 2011 AUG. 2010
Average Weekday Boardings 45,536 43,373 41,172
Average Saturday Boardings 27,291 23,058 23,094
Average Sunday and Holiday Boardings 16,143 18,901 17,910
Total Calendar Month Boardings 1,221,076 1,165,424 1,087,718
Gold Line
AUG. 2012 AUG. 2011 AUG. 2010
Average Weekday Boardings 42,125 39,598 35,247
Average Saturday Boardings 21,050 24,460 24,269
Average Sunday and Holiday Boardings 17,075 20,868 21,157
Total Calendar Month Boardings 1,121,376 1,092,062 978,287

Rail Systemwide Ridership Estimates
AUG. 2012 AUG. 2011 AUG. 2010
Average Weekday Boardings 353,469 324,462 307,980
Average Saturday Boardings 217,413 205,890 200,571
Average Sunday and Holiday Boardings 177,450 168,478 170,915
Total Calendar Month Boardings 9,709,229 8,960,107 8,432,426
Includes Expo Line ridership.


Systemwide Ridership Estimates
AUG. 2012 AUG. 2011 AUG. 2010
Average Weekday Boardings 1,474,255 1,414,047 1,401,117
Average Saturday Boardings 967,778 958,370 951,312
Average Sunday and Holiday Boardings 750,451 734,927 727,723
Total Calendar Month Boardings 40,780,785 39,296,271 38,268,437

[Jonboy1983]

Among medium-sized transit cities (those with between 125K and 349K daily trips) these cities reported the largest year-to-date percentage gains:

SAINT LOUIS +9.05%
PITTSBURGH +7.53%
SALT LAKE CITY +6.78%

Good for Pittsburgh. It's especially good considering that the Port Authority was able to dodge the massive transit cuts they proposed for earlier this month. I wonder how much of that is attributed to the T extension to the North Side. I know the parking garage above the North Shore station went from almost empty to just about full after the extension became operational in late March and that ridership has since spiked...

[electricron]

Originally Posted by Ch.G, Ch.G

I'm flabbergasted that a metropolitan area that has experienced such precipitous growth over the past decade would make those kinds of service cuts.

It really depends upon where that growth is occurring within a metro area. If a transit agency is funded by sales taxes from just two of ten counties, and most of the economic growth is in the other eight, there's a possibility of there being no economic growth in two.

[J. Will]

I'm not a big fan of the APTA numbers anymore because they aren't even retroactively consistent. Example:

Montreal:

2nd quarter, 2011: 2,337,500

2nd quarter, 2012: 1,354,500 (Year to date change: +2.04%)

If there was a 2.04% increase year-over-year, 2012 should show daily ridership of about 2,385,185 in 2012, not 1,354,500. According to their numbers, there was a 42% decrease in daily ridership, not a 2% increase.

[atlantaguy]

Originally Posted by Ch.G, Ch.G

I'm flabbergasted that a metropolitan area that has experienced such precipitous growth over the past decade would make those kinds of service cuts.

It's a reflection of the State Government, which is EXTREMELY anti-rail.

Not only does the State contribute zero dollars to the system, there is an oversight committee called MARTOC that DICTATES how they spend their own damn money. It is a never ending battle....

[atlantaguy]

Originally Posted by electricron

It really depends upon where that growth is occurring within a metro area. If a transit agency is funded by sales taxes from just two of ten counties, and most of the economic growth is in the other eight, there's a possibility of there being no economic growth in two.

That is definately not the case here, especially post-recession. The inner two Counties (Fulton & DeKalb) account for the lions share of almost all of the current growth & construction in the metro. The movement back into the core is actually accelerating.

[bobdreamz]

Originally Posted by afiggatt

Among the major heavy rail metro systems, the NY subway (+4.39%), Chicago L (+6.56%), and BART (+7.93%) all show solid growth for the first 6 months of the year. Meanwhile MARTA (-7.97% for the 2nd qtr) took a big hit. Miami Metrorail shows a small drop for the 2nd qtr (-0.35%), but the new airport station opened in July (IIRC), so the 3rd quarter report should show the early effects of providing airport access for what had been a single line Metro.]

Miami's Metrorail mostly likely dropped due to cutbacks & service delays in the 2nd. Quarter as the system prepared & tested for the opening of the new Airport line. Commuters were warned and MDT provide extra bus service to compensate.

[nname]

Originally Posted by J. Will

I'm not a big fan of the APTA numbers anymore because they aren't even retroactively consistent. Example:

Montreal:

2nd quarter, 2011: 2,337,500

2nd quarter, 2012: 1,354,500 (Year to date change: +2.04%)

If there was a 2.04% increase year-over-year, 2012 should show daily ridership of about 2,385,185 in 2012, not 1,354,500. According to their numbers, there was a 42% decrease in daily ridership, not a 2% increase.

They adjusted all 2011 monthly and year-to-date ridership on both Q1 and Q2 reports (and of course they didn't go back to modify the 2011 reports). I wonder why they're changing...

[SnyderBock]

Originally Posted by LMich

Service cuts, last year, and a failed tax expanion, this year. I think there is a thread in this subforum with more background on the issue. MARTA has an inherently flawed funding mechanism. It gets no funding from the State of Georgia; it relies on a local sales tax.

How is that inherently flawed? This is how Denver's RTD funds its self. RTD collects a 1% sales tax from a district which includes all or parts of an 8 county greater metro area.

[bobdreamz]

Originally Posted by atlantaguy

It's a reflection of the State Government, which is EXTREMELY anti-rail.

Not only does the State contribute zero dollars to the system, there is an oversight committee called MARTOC that DICTATES how they spend their own damn money. It is a never ending battle....

Never understood how a state that contributes nothing to MARTA financially can dictate what percent of monies can go towards operating costs & the rest for expansion. Don't you guys have 'home rule charter" like we do here in Florida? Did the state even provide funding when MARTA was building it's rail lines?

[atlantaguy]

Originally Posted by bobdreamz

Never understood how a state that contributes nothing to MARTA financially can dictate what percent of monies can go towards operating costs & the rest for expansion. Don't you guys have 'home rule charter" like we do here in Florida? Did the state even provide funding when MARTA was building it's rail lines?

No home rule charter for MARTA at all, bobdreamz. It's actually a Constitutional Amendment here that State oversight is included, and many believe it was set up for failure from the start. The $$$ were from the pot of Federal money rejected by Seattle voters in the 70's, combined with the bonding authority backed by the 1 cent sales tax in Fulton & DeKalb.

The recently defeated metro-wide sales tax for transportation was also set up to fail by the Republithug legislature that insisted it be during the July primary vs. the November general election. Most of us feel it would have passed if the vote had been during the general election, as it DID pass in the City and just barely was defeated in Fulton & DeKalb by razor thin margins. I honestly believe it would have passed handily in Fulton, DeKalb, Clayton & probably Gwinnett (pop. around 870,000). As much as I love this beautiful State, politically we truly are a blue island in a sea of very dark red, and the powers-that-be try their damnedest to keep it that way.

I can only think of two other States that are as polarized as we are when it comes to urban vs. rural - IL and MO.

[L41A]

Originally Posted by SnyderBock

How is that inherently flawed? This is how Denver's RTD funds its self. RTD collects a 1% sales tax from a district which includes all or parts of an 8 county greater metro area.

MARTA receives no state funding for operations. And on top of that, the state legislature mandates that MARTA must spend no more than 50% of its revenue on operations. No other transit agency in the US operates under such rigid conditions. So if the economy slows and sales tax revenue declines, MARTA has limited flexibility to access the funds that it collects. MARTA then has to cut services because of the aforementioned state mandate that tells the agency how to use the money it collects. MARTA may collect millions of dollars but have no flexibility to use it for operations.

I don't know all the details of how Denver RTD is funded but I just browsed a couple of articles that details a great deal of collaboration between RTD and Colorado DOT (CDOT) that MARTA could only dream to have - examples like CDOT and RTD funding projects on US36, like CDOT and RTD working together to widened interstate and expand light-rail, etc. That kind of cooperation between in any level of Georgia state government (including GDOT) and MARTA is non-existent and even hostile.