Public Transit News / Current Events (MN only)

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Qhaberl
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Re: Public Transit News and Current Happenings

Postby Qhaberl » June 24th, 2018, 1:32 pm

Metro Council published 2017 ridership data by stop on the Minnesota Geospatial Commons a few months ago.



Transitways:


A Line - 5,356


Amending post with ridership by station for Blue and Green Lines:

Target Field - 1,930/1,657 (Green/Blue)
Hennepin Ave - 3,015/2,472 (Green/Blue)
Nicollet Mall - 1,978/2,176 (Green/Blue)
Gov't Plaza - 1,829/2,013 (Green/Blue)
US Bank Stadium - 2,774/2,903 (Green/Blue)

Two questions:

How are they able to determine who is getting on which light rail line in downtown Minneapolis?

How is the A- Line stand up to projections?


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Tcmetro
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Re: Public Transit News and Current Happenings

Postby Tcmetro » June 24th, 2018, 2:28 pm

The buses and light rail trains have sensors near the doors called APCs (Automated Passenger Counters). Thus, ridership information is known at the vehicle level and can be analysed based on the trips attributes.

alexschief
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Re: Public Transit News and Current Happenings

Postby alexschief » June 24th, 2018, 5:34 pm

Some thoughts:

1. In 2017, the APTA's Ridership Reports recorded about 72.2k weekday ridership on the light rail system. Add up the Blue and Green Line numbers in this thread and you get 78.3k weekday rides. Seems to be two different metrics of reporting going on here, perhaps the APTA number for the system as a whole isn't double counting people that that ride both lines, which suggests that about 6.1k weekday trips include a light rail transfer?

2. The bus route numbers really emphasize how significant the next aBRT conversions are. They'll replace the first, second, sixth, and fourth most popular bus routes in the system. Ridership increased a third when the 84 was mostly replaced by the A-Line. If the C, D, B, and E aBRT projects achieve a far lower percentage increase around 20%, that's 9261 more weekday rides. If they achieved a 30% increase, that comes to 13,891 more weekday rides.

3. Both the Nicollet (#18) and Central Avenue (#10) buses are among the most popular in the city. That corridor could easily be combined, and should be next on the aBRT list. The ridership of both routes combined is 17,734, with aBRT upgrades you could add between 3,549 (20%) to 5,320 (30%) new rides.

4. It'll really be interesting to see what happens to ridership on the Prospect Park Station. Back when this data was first counted (not during the school year), there were about half as many trips at this station as there are today. Now, in 2018 and 2019, hundreds of new units of housing have already opened, or will open, just steps from this station. The Prospect Park Station will really be a key test to see if the kind of development going in around transit stations is truly transit-oriented development, where people have been convinced to build their lives to a degree around the access provided by transit, or simply transit-adjacent development where the LRT is a nice amenity, but people are still going about their lives much the same as they did before.

5. Comparing and contrasting with that 2014 data, ridership is up at every single station (except Nicollet Mall for some reason). The biggest percentage increases are in the University area, which is no surprise considering that that earlier data wasn't taken when school was in session. But even east of 280, and also excluding downtown Minneapolis, ridership is way up, with the largest increases coming at Robert Street (+56.64%), Raymond Avenue (+48.64%), Hamline Avenue (42.81%), and Lexington Parkway (42.47%). The smallest increases were at Central (6.38%), Western (6.92%), and Dale (7.00%). Overall, the total ridership (and again, this 2014 data is from right after the line opened) is up 42.8%.

exiled_antipodean
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Re: Public Transit News and Current Happenings

Postby exiled_antipodean » June 24th, 2018, 6:59 pm

I think the Raymond Avenue numbers are a good indication people are shifting their modal use. Someone on twitter posted about some absurd inflation of property values in the area. Absurd in the sense that there's clearly demand for housing, and it might not be being met.

DanPatchToget
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Re: Public Transit News and Current Happenings

Postby DanPatchToget » June 24th, 2018, 7:06 pm

Man, American Boulevard and Bloomington Central were really not worth building.

I'm also surprised that ridership is that low at Cedar-Riverside.
I really hope someday Bloomington Central Station will be closed. 28th is for the park & riders and American can be for the developments and hotels just east of there.

People (mostly anti-transit folks) said if light rail fails then we're stuck with it. They should've said that about the Red Line. I know this is probably apples to oranges, but Northstar with only five roundtrips (and one reverse commute roundtrip) has more ridership than the Red Line with 20-30 minute frequency all day in each direction. But I suppose if life gives you lemons (in this case the Red Line), make lemonade.

snar
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Re: Public Transit News and Current Happenings

Postby snar » June 24th, 2018, 10:15 pm


1. In 2017, the APTA's Ridership Reports recorded about 72.2k weekday ridership on the light rail system. Add up the Blue and Green Line numbers in this thread and you get 78.3k weekday rides. Seems to be two different metrics of reporting going on here, perhaps the APTA number for the system as a whole isn't double counting people that that ride both lines, which suggests that about 6.1k weekday trips include a light rail transfer?

5. Comparing and contrasting with that 2014 data, ridership is up at every single station (except Nicollet Mall for some reason).
1. Presumably most riders transfer at US Bank Station, however US Bank has only 5,800 daily riders. Ignoring that not everybody uses US Bank solely as a transfer point, where are the other 300 transfers happening?

5. Nicollet Mall ridership is probably down due to the construction, buses moved to Hennepin as transfer points for most of 2017.

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Tcmetro
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Re: Public Transit News and Current Happenings

Postby Tcmetro » June 24th, 2018, 11:49 pm

APTA numbers are for "unlinked" trips which means that anyone transferring between lines would be counted twice.

The Metro Council data is for "Fall 2017" and is likely a smaller sample than the data submitted to APTA. The APTA data is divided up quarterly, and likely includes a number of days when classes are not being held at the U, while I imagine the Metro Council data is collected while the U is in session.

alexschief
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Re: Public Transit News and Current Happenings

Postby alexschief » June 25th, 2018, 6:19 am

Oh, you're right about Nicollet Mall construction, that's clearly the reason and I forgot about it already.

This Met Council data is probably from September or October of 2017 then, since those are the two months that the APTA shows had the highest weekday ridership.

DanPatchToget
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Re: Public Transit News and Current Happenings

Postby DanPatchToget » June 27th, 2018, 7:41 am

So is the data an average from September to October of 2017? How much would special events such as Twins games affect the results?

I'm only asking because I already found people on Facebook calling the results fake (or fixed) data.

Qhaberl
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Re: Public Transit News and Current Happenings

Postby Qhaberl » June 27th, 2018, 9:09 am

If buses and trains have people counting sensors, why are we only looking at data from september and October?

Can’t we look back at data for an entire 365 period and then do the math from there?


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Qhaberl
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Re: Public Transit News and Current Happenings

Postby Qhaberl » June 27th, 2018, 9:10 am

I would like to see the data from the sensors made public.


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Tcmetro
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Re: Public Transit News and Current Happenings

Postby Tcmetro » June 27th, 2018, 9:32 am

The data is from "Fall 2017". The metadata doesn't provide any details about specific sampling dates.

This is what the metadata does say:
All information except the boardings and alightings are based on the scheduled service that operated during the analysis time period. 

The regular route bus and BRT boardings and alightings data are averages from the Metro Transit automatic passenger counter system. These data are averaged over approximately a three month period with certain non-standard days excluded from the averages. Non-standard days include those with severe weather, special events, school break periods, and other days that do not have normal ridership patterns. 

The light rail and commuter rail boardings data are summarized from separate systems. Alightings data is not currently available for those services.
The data is selected to be representative of highest use essentially.

Here is the download link (which I forgot to leave in my original post) for those interested: https://gisdata.mn.gov/dataset/us-mn-st ... alightings

If anyone wants more data they can always reach out to MT or submit a FOIA request.

DanPatchToget
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Re: Public Transit News and Current Happenings

Postby DanPatchToget » June 27th, 2018, 10:21 am

So 32,000 on the Blue Line isn't the actual average for that period?

I'm trying to understand this, but the way I see it is why not take all the weekdays in that period and average it out instead of trying to weasel your way to a higher number. Or is that not what they're doing?

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Tcmetro
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Re: Public Transit News and Current Happenings

Postby Tcmetro » June 27th, 2018, 10:37 am

Their idea is to get a "normal day" ridership number. Collecting numbers during the Fall is somewhat biased however, as that is when ridership is highest.

It would be great to get better info from Metro Transit about ridership. It seems that "real" numbers are aggregated by service provider/type and presented publically at the transportation committee meetings every quarter. Comparatively, many peer agencies around the country provide route level data on a monthly basis.

hiawather
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Re: Public Transit News and Current Happenings

Postby hiawather » June 27th, 2018, 11:08 am

Wait a minute...people keep saying in various local forums that the trains are always empty and a huge waste of money. Are you people trying to tell that those people are full of shxt?

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VacantLuxuries
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Re: Public Transit News and Current Happenings

Postby VacantLuxuries » June 27th, 2018, 11:17 am

Wait a minute...people keep saying in various local forums that the trains are always empty and a huge waste of money. Are you people trying to tell that those people are full of shxt?
They also complain about freeway congestion, but I drove through the Lowry Tunnel at 3am and I don't see the bottleneck problem they're always griping about.

DanPatchToget
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Re: Public Transit News and Current Happenings

Postby DanPatchToget » June 27th, 2018, 11:22 am

Wait a minute...people keep saying in various local forums that the trains are always empty and a huge waste of money. Are you people trying to tell that those people are full of shxt?
They also complain about freeway congestion, but I drove through the Lowry Tunnel at 3am and I don't see the bottleneck problem they're always griping about.
To be fair there is freeway congestion. Its just that the solutions I think we need (better transit and walkability) are different, some would even say radical, to the solutions the average suburbanite would suggest (more asphalt everywhere).

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VacantLuxuries
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Re: Public Transit News and Current Happenings

Postby VacantLuxuries » June 27th, 2018, 11:39 am

No malice intended, but I couldn't resist.

DanPatchToget
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Re: Public Transit News and Current Happenings

Postby DanPatchToget » June 27th, 2018, 12:58 pm

Yeah, I probably should’ve assumed that when you said through the Lowry Hill Tunnel at 3 AM.

mattaudio
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Re: Public Transit News and Current Happenings

Postby mattaudio » June 27th, 2018, 3:50 pm

As a frequent 133 rider, I've been watching how numerous express and limited stop buses use the left lane of Park and Portland between Downtown and 31st Street. But some of these routes are expected to stay on Park and Portland even after the 35W project, as an equity improvement for Phillips and Powderhorn planned in the MetroTransit SIP.

Anyone know how Park and Portland could serve these routes with stops on the right side, but without interfering with bike lanes? The best option seems like it would be bus bulbs between the vehicle lane and the bike lane every few blocks, but that seems like quite the expense for limited ridership.

I realize the 39 has stopped on Park and Portland for years, and crosses the buffered bike lane to a curbside stop to do it, but that seems far from ideal.


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