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%.