[PRCo] Re: METRORAIL Ridership

[Schneider Fred]

And John Swindler could tell you how Philadelphia adds x percent to  
all their counts to make up for what they believe the operators fail  
to count.   It results in numbers which personally believe are  
impossible.

If you look at the Baltimore light rail patronage numbers against  
their timetables, they are hauling more people each day than the cars  
can carry!  Perhaps that is why the Maryland DOT feels it is illegal  
for railfans to photograph their light rail and subway trains ...  
they don't want to have lie perpetuated?

San Jose runs empty trains all day long but the told the FTA they  
hauled 26,000 people on weekdays in 2006.   When pigs fly.   They  
make the light rail cars in Pittsburgh look jammed like New York's  
Lexington Avenue subway trains.

Any one can get the numbers.  You can surf the web ... the FTA has  
one set.   APTA has another set of numbers.   Sometimes they match.   
For other agencies they are miles apart even though they are  
"conceptually identical."   You want to look, you pull them up.

I think the Phoenix and Houston numbers are pretty good.   I would  
not be surprised that San Diego numbers are low.   Los Angeles might  
be close because they were taking a lot of pot shots for being too  
high and they have since shaved them.   Last spring Phoenix was  
publishing numbers in the low 20K on weekday.   I rode it and counted  
between 20,000 and 25,000.

But we've been there on this list before.  Passenger counts are  
arbitrary.   They're for people like you and me who want to have a  
feel for how effective a line is.   Transit managers only need to be  
concerned with dollars.  That hasn't in a hundred years and it isn't  
going change in the century.

The passenger counts are also probably pretty important to a  
politician who wants to know whether it's worth worrying about this  
new light rail line and its constituency.   But the general manager  
is still more interested in the dollars he has to fix the cars.

The same thing was true in the state employment service when I worked  
there.   It too was a numbers game.   We always gave primary  
importance to those sectors of the business that gave us the greatest  
return ... a migrant farm work who could generate a half dozen farm  
placements in a month was more important to a manager than getting  
someone a job as a manager for life in a factory at five figures.    
That all changed when the federal government created a data recording  
system (in the 1970s)  for the 50 states and the territories that  
recorded data according to the persons social security number.    
Suddenly a person getting a job became more important than raw job  
placements.   We went out of the placement business and into business  
serving people almost over night because the computer count how many  
times we served each individual.   The representatives and senators  
in Washington were now finding out how effective we were as a labor  
exchange.

On Jun 27, 2009, at 11:24 AM, Herb Brannon wrote:

> 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:
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> I knew what I meant to say, but I guess I need to learn to  
>> complete the
>> sentence.
>>
>>
>>
>> Let's try again.
>>
>>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>
>>
>> So the Frank and Ernest cartoon quote about accounting also  
>> applies to
>> ridership totals in larger systems.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> -- 
> 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*
>
>
>