[PRCo] Re: Riding continues to rise?

[John Swindler]

Again, not to be overlooked is that Howard White was right.
 
Fred is chosing to ignore that there were 19 weekdays in Nov. 2007 and 21 weekdays in Nov. 2008, due to 2008 being a leap year.  There's your difference  -  Maybe.  Because it is unknown if the number was adjusted for number of weekdays.  Many will do that.
 
But Fred also doesn't know which monthly ridership number is being reported.  A quick example is a transit agency that has four different monthly ridership numbers, and will sometimes take the average of two of them as the "official" number.  This is not uncommon.
 
Cheers
John 
 
p.s.  we only had two empty seats last night on the 38 seat bus assigned to Hershey run.  We were in the mid-20s last year at this time.  We peaked at three standees last summer.  I think Joshua rides PAT.  If so, what has been your experience???  Who else actually rides transit daily??  
 
 
 
> From: fwschneider at comcast.net> Subject: [PRCo] Re: Riding continues to rise?> Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:51:18 -0500> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org> > Correct for seasonal changes. But we're not talking seasonal. > Summer season ends in August when the children go back to school.> > They were comparing exactly what you suggested and that negated the > change in ridership owning to the decline in oil prices.> > On Dec 16, 2008, at 4:45 PM, Joshua Dunfield wrote:> > > 2008/12/16 Schneider Fred <fwschneider at comcast.net>:> >> Dallas claims that their riding is continuing to rise even though gas> >> prices are falling. Is it? Well, it is if you compare it to the> >> right month in the past. If you compare November 2008 to November> >> 2007, which was lower, then riding is still going up.> >> > That's a perfectly reasonable way of accounting for seasonal variation> > in ridership.> >> >> But when you compare a sequence of months in a row, ...> >> > Would you compare a sequence of days in a row? No, because every> > Saturday (and again on Sunday) ridership would collapse, only to> > explode the following Monday.> >> > I think the number you really want is % increase of Nov 2008 over Nov> > 2007 vs. the % increase of Oct 2008 over Oct 2007, etc. That factors> > out seasonal variation and would give real information about the> > ridership trend.> >> > -j.> >> > 
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