Rodeo-related boardings just one measure of transit-system health
METRO's Sit and Spin blog recently posted about the light-rail trolley's record ridership during this year's rodeo:
On Thursday, March 15, we had the highest, single-day number of passenger boardings in METRORail's history - 64,448 passengers.
Of those passenger boardings, an estimated 18,367 were going to or from the rodeo. Of the 20 highest single-day ridership totals, 11 are associated with the rodeo.
A "boarding" is every time someone boards the train. The same person can board multiple times.
On rodeo days, METRORail carried 922,872 boardings this year, a 14 percent increase over last year. Although some of this spike in ridership was due to factors other than the rodeo, there's no doubt that we carried significantly more passengers during the rodeo this year than last year.
The Chronicle has kept a close eye on METRO's rodeo-related ridership as well. There was this story in February (sans link because it has now expired):
Metro set a weekday record Tuesday with 56,388 passenger boardings on MetroRail.
Many of the passengers were attending opening night of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.
Tuesday was the highest, single-day weekday total in MetroRail's history, surpassing last Friday's single-day weekday total of 54,193 passenger boardings, according to Metro.
And today, Rad Sallee noted the boarding record set on March 15 that was described on the Sit and Spin blog.
Meanwhile, Tom Bazan recently received METRO's latest boarding and paid-fare information, via public information request, and those figures tell somewhat of a different story -- one of declining fare revenue (which presumably means that across the system, fewer people are paying to ride METRO mass transit vehicles, despite all the forced transfers onto the tram to boost its "boardings" statistics). Media outlets don't always give those numbers a close look, even though they are a better indicator of the transit system's overall health and utilization than light-rail trolley boardings.
Here's the Excel spreadsheet that Bazan received from METRO, for anyone who wants to pore over the details. Please feel free to leave your analysis in the forum.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/26/07 10:43 PM | Houston Transit | Technorati | Sphere | Comments (8)
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