[PRCo] Re: 1976

[Fred Schneider]

Will this do?   It comes from their own web site.   Not sure why the  
Green Line is down unless the aviation factories and other industries  
near Redondo and El Segundo are also having a lot of people on  
layoffs.   Could also be that a good number of airlines have cut back  
on service to LAX and that means fewer baggage handlers and counter  
personnel at the airport who were using the line.   Remember, it  
isn't travelers who generally use airport mass transit but it's the  
people who work at the airports who use it.

But I have no clue at all why the bus service has collapsed so much  
in opposition to the national trend.  Must be something in the water.

As much as I don't like Wendell Cox, you will find he has a web site  
also claiming that LACMTA doesn't know how to count and he presents  
preliminary, adjusted and final figures showing a difference of  
300%.    It may be that they have simply become the INEPTA of the  
west?   We do know that they aroused a fire storm of monumental  
proportions when they proposed installing fare gates or turnstiles in  
the subway because of one of the highest fare evasion rates in the  
industry.  If you read some of the newspaper accounts, you would have  
gotten the feeling that the public believed it was their right to be  
trusted even if they had no intention of paying a fare.  Perhaps we  
are comparing riders in one year with cash customers in another????

But then the problems with fare evasion are not restricted to the  
USA.   I remember coming to the conclusion that it must have been a  
national sport in Holland.  I must have been correct because a few  
years later the Dutch dropped the policy of the honor system and went  
back to paying fares to the drivers and motormen.  I suspect the most  
honest numbers might have come from Grenoble, France, where I watched  
five or six uniformed fare officers board an LRV I was riding ... the  
gestapo entered at every door.  There was no escaping them.   It  
wasn't a case of the officer getting on one door and all the unpaid  
riders rushing off the other doors.   Within a minute or two they had  
collared a man without a fare card.  But only one.  They kept their  
people honest by not letting them escape.

At any rate, here are the Los Angeles numbers you wanted John.  I  
think they are suspect.

http://www.metro.net/news_info/ridership_avg.htm

On Jul 28, 2008, at 9:41 AM, John Swindler wrote:

>
>
> I'd seen a comment that Pasadena light rail now exceeded Orange  
> line busway, but would like to get some good numbers.  This would  
> not be a popular comparison, if true.  Also, time to visit MTA site  
> for update on Santa Monica via Air line.
>
>