[All] LRT - info on number of boarders

[Kevin Thomason]

Sharon,

It is absurd to try to insinuate ridership numbers by only looking a metropolitan census area population data.  There are countless essential factors not being considered here such as;

	- the size, length and quality of the transit systems
	- the frequency and convenience of transit service
	- regional differences in demographics, culture and expectations
	- weather and climate differences (rainy Seattle and scotching Phoenix - how long will you wait in a 110 degree desert for transit?)
	- costs of transit compared to alternatives - ie. in some of these cities parking is very cheap, others expensive
	- other mitigating factors such as existing driving habits and traffic patterns (gridlock vs. wide open roads)
	- the density and urban form of the city - Dallas for example is tremendously spread out over vast distances making effective transit difficult
	- even things such as crime rates in some cities and hours of operation will dramatically affect ridership numbers and transit success

All of these things are going to have considerable impact on ridership numbers beyond the base population number and it is crazy to try to predict the ridership of the Grand River Transit LRT based on the population of Houston.

I also find it interesting that the list contains likely the worst cities in the world for transit and notoriously low ridership.  Why are cities with extremely successful transit systems such as San Francisco, San Jose, Salt Lake City, Montreal, Calgary, Washington DC, Vancouver, New York City, Toronto, Portland, and others not on this list?  Even more so where is the European, Asian, and South America LRT data where there is even far more positive transportation boarding numbers for equivalent populations?

Even assuming that somehow David Ramsey's dire predictions are correct, an LRT subsidy of $22 million a year is still less than half the cost of one 1km Weber street bridge project, or less than half the cost of the $54 million Erb Street West repaving that happened last year, or about 0.000000022% of the annual Regional budget.  

Kevin.

----------------------------

On 2011-04-12, at 1:07 PM, Sharon Woodley wrote:

> Hope you can look at this short pdf on the proposed number of boarders for the LRT and what may be the real numbers as per other cities in North America.
> Sharon Woodley
> 
> --- On Mon, 4/11/11, jean narveson <midnightediting at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> From: jean narveson <midnightediting at gmail.com>
> Subject: oops: one correction
> To: "moi" <midnightediting at gmail.com>
> Received: Monday, April 11, 2011, 8:19 AM
> 
> Dave noticed an important change that had to be made in his last sentence.  It should read:
> 
> With less than half the boarders, the region's subsidy will be about $21.7M instead of the $3.8M forecast (see 'Connecting to the Future'  Summer 2009).
> 
> Revised copy attached.
> 
> <LRT April, Dave REVISED.pdf>_______________________________________________
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