Quote:
Originally Posted by muertecaza
Ridership statistics are available here.
I've also been curious and have been tracking the statistics. (because that's what normal, sane people do in their free time). I would say it's arguable and unclear whether downtown residential has increased ridership. I have a list of month-on-month ridership back to 2014. Ridership increased 3.4% in 2015 as compared to 2014; and jumped 11.53% in 2016 as compared to 2015 (although I would say a lot of that is likely attributable to the Central Mesa extension opening). In 2017, ridership was basically stagnant as compared to 2016, and ridership in the first couple months of 2018 have been down ~4% as compared to the equivalent months in 2017.
So ridership is up ~10% since 2014, which is awesome and corresponds to roughly the period of increased construction. But unclear to me how much of that is new extensions, etc., and how much will continue due to current slight downward trend. |
How accurate are these ridership statistics? I'm sure they have a pretty good method of counting riders. However, in my mind, I compare them to census reports which are pretty much rough estimates and can be off by a large margin.
I would say they are watching boarding pass sales, but that seems like it would be way too off to me as there would be all day passes, monthly passes, riders that don't buy a pass at all, DBacks game riders which ride for free, etc. which would affect the numbers.
So, if someone could enlighten me, how are the ridership counts taken and how far off could the estimates be?