Quote:
Originally Posted by miketoronto
This is from the report on Calgary's LRT. As you can see the ridership was high on the first line.
http://www.calgarytransit.com/pdf/Ca...RB_revised.pdf
"The initial 12.9 km (7.7 mi) south LRT line, extending from Anderson Road to
downtown, opened for revenue service in 1981 May, on schedule and within budget, and
soon achieved its forecast ridership target of 40,000 boarding passengers per day."
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Cool. Thanks! I was looking for data for when it opened. Though I admit I'm curious to know what "soon" means in that report, it brings up a good point, that it met ridership forecasts. It took the Millennium Line in Vancouver several years to meet ridership forecasts, Canada Line is pretty much on target now, I don't know about the Expo line.
I'm always interested to see how a city reacts to its initial line. No one REALLY knows what to expect, how people will use or not use the new line... will it really attract riders etc.
You have slow starts like the Las Vegas Monorail, which is a victim of high fares and inconvenient location, fast starts like the Canada Line, which had established bus ridership.
One thing that I notice, and it seems obvious but should be said... is that it's all about time and cost. If the line is as fast as the car, or not much slower, people will take it. If it's slow, people would pay considerably more and take their car.
This time/value consideration was apparent when I was talking to a co-worker. She has two options on her way home. $3 with toll, or no toll. When traffic's bad and the toll route will save her an hour, she pays. Clearly, she feels ( as many do ) that paying extra for convenience and time savings is worth it.
This unfortunately is not good for many of the LRT implementations, as running at grade for a lot of the journey and ends up being a slow ride.
This would even apply to grade-separated systems that stop frequently, run at slow speeds, are infrequent or any combination of these.