[PRCo] Re: METRORAIL Ridership

[Herb Brannon]

When PATransit began giving senior citizens free rides, management wanted
every senior citizen counted during the free ride period. The Commonwealth
of Pa, of course, paid for the rides from lottery money. Operators were
instructed to make sure each and every senior citizen was accounted for
since money would be coming from the Commonwealth to cover the "free" ride.
So, to make sure PATransit got its share of that lottery money all operators
just rang up more seniors than actually were riding. Our Amalgamated Transit
Union representatives even instructed us to "pad" the count. This senior
citizen count was done every Wednesday, so only seniors were counted on the
registers. My system was for every ten seniors, pull the register rope four
more times. I doubt if an accurate ridership count could be had anywhere in
the US then or now. I'm sure the numbers, today, are also padded as they
were thirty-five years ago.
On Sat, Jun 27, 2009 at 7:57 AM, John Swindler <j_swindler at hotmail.com>wrote:

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> I knew what I meant to say, but I guess I need to learn to complete the
> sentence.
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> Let's try again.
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> I would not bet my life that any passenger statistics offered by New York,
> Boston nor Philadelphia.  They are statistical samples, and using the same
> sample, some of these agencies, if not all, come up with multiple system
> ridership numbers for the day.  Sure, you might see the bus driver
> registering each fare on a GFI farebox, but that might be used only to
> validate the ridership number generated by a statistical sample.  And we
> don't know what "adjustments" are made for driver/farebox errors.
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> When you get down to smaller systems, such as a Lancaster, what is reported
> is what the drivers report.  I'm still learning what can - and what can not
> be done within the GFI software.  One of my jobs is to validate the process
> used by certain transit systems to report ridership numbers.
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> So the Frank and Ernest cartoon quote about accounting also applies to
> ridership totals in larger systems.
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-- 
Herb Brannon
On America's North Coast  <TM>

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he
has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.
*Theodore Roosevelt*