News   Dec 20, 2024
UrbanToronto Year-End Poll: Vote on the Best Buildings of 2024, presented by Sapphire Balconies
 1.2K     6 
News   Dec 20, 2024
UrbanToronto's Social Media Presence Skyrocketed in 2024
 898     2 
News   Dec 20, 2024
Mattamy Homes Records A Year of Accomplishments
 1.8K     0 

Transit Ridership Statistics & Tracking

innsertnamehere said:
IIRC a bunch of APTA's TTC numbers changed as the TTC had been providing linked trips, while APTA measure unlinked trips. The TTCs number skyrocketed by like 70% once they started providing accurate numbers. Not sure if this is the explanation here or not though.
Click to expand...
But that doesn't really explain a lot of things. If I remember correctly, streetcar route ridership is measured through unlinked trip numbers.
In 2018, the average daily ridership of the streetcar network was:
261K PPD, but the true daily ridership over the streetcar network was closer to 330K PPD.

After going through some numbers and subtracting the ridership numbers from the 502, 503, 505, and 511, I'm going to assume that the 2018 numbers previously assumed that the streetcar routes were operating with streetcars, and the 2019 numbers assume that buses operating on streetcar lines count as Light rail/streetcars. But even with this, the jump is still around 130K PPD (a jump of 40%). That could be from different counting practices at the streetcar/subway stations, but there are still no guarantees. Hopefully, the summer report sorts things out.
 
blaixx said:
Latest GO ridership:
Click to expand...

Train ridership increase of 4.8% overall but only 1.2% for GO at Union Station; it's a good sign that they're starting to attract trips that don't end at Union; fares can drop significantly if seats get 2 or 3 riders in them per inbound trip.

Exhibition and UPX (to Union) are part of the increase, but not most.
 
innsertnamehere said:
IIRC a bunch of APTA's TTC numbers changed as the TTC had been providing linked trips, while APTA measure unlinked trips. The TTCs number skyrocketed by like 70% once they started providing accurate numbers. Not sure if this is the explanation here or not though.
Click to expand...

It was only the subway numbers that were not unlinked. Around 400k trips per weekday or 100M trips annually were missing from the TTC total. Before it was around 800M unlinked vs 500M linked, but it should have been 900M unlinked.

The Brampton Transit numbers on APTA are linked. Should be around 150k per weekday and 45M boardings annually, not 100k and 30M.

Oakville Transit and YRT are correct. 2.8M linked for Oakville vs 4M unlinked. 22M linked for YRT vs 30M unlinked.

Mississauga used to have APTA membership but canceled it to save money. But they state linked and unlinked in their budget. 40M linked vs 55M unlinked.

I hate that GO Transit always uses unlinked trips whenever it states its ridership even here in Canada to a Canadian audience. By Canadian standards, GO is actually around 55M riders, not 70M. For a public agency like GO trying so hard to mislead the public like that just should never happen.
 
Looks like they've stopped showing ridership for Niagara Falls station, to save their face.
The excuse: "** Niagara WEGO partnership ridership is included. Because we do not know the station customers come from all boardings and alightings are attributed to Niagara GO. Child boardings have been removed for consistency with Kids GO Free. "
 
it is interesting that Unionville ridership dropped. It probably shows where the passengers originate.
 
blaixx said:
Latest GO ridership:
blog.metrolinx.com

Metrolinx releases updated GO Transit ridership map – System sees almost five per cent bump in GO train boardings

New data culled from across GO rail network and UP Express finds increase in numbers attributed to lower fares for shorter trips as well as increase on all lines. If you’re a regular GO train custo…
blog.metrolinx.com blog.metrolinx.com
Click to expand...

What period exactly is this reporting and comparing? The header of the graph is very confusing.

"RIDERSHIP PERFORMANCE YEAR-TO-DATE (YTD) GO Train and UP Express April 2019 to July 2019
Click to expand...
 
The big issue I have with numbers is "How Many Riders Us Transit In The First Place"??

With boarding numbers, they sound great, but are misleading to how many riders makeup those numbers in the first place. It makes no different which system you use to ride or count riders, they don't know how many riders ride a system. At the same time, riders are counted every time they transfer from one route to another on the same fare.

A large number of riders only do one round trip, while some do only one way trip. Heavy users do more than the one round trip by getting off/on a number of times for the day doing what they have to do and that spikes the boarding numbers. At times I can spike that boarding number as much as 20 times in one day when I am doing a photo shoot day. Most days I am in the 3-7 boarding range.

If the Presto really had a back end that works like it should, it would show how many riders are use the system daily by counting the first tap of the rider day trip. All other taps would be boarding. It would be able to say how many trips that a rider took for the day base on the 2 hour window.

GO in away can say X riders use the system daily based on the number of taps as well issuing paper tickets.

TTC has no way to count rider using the streetcar system under the current fare media system. If you have any type of pass, it is never use to tap on when getting on a car. On a daily base, riders with a Presto card can't tap on when getting on as either the readers aren't working or the system is down. Even if the one reader isn't working, riders don't go to the other due to ridership or not willing to do so. Then there are the fare machine where one or both not working or can't get to it.

All kids under 6 aren't counted unless they go through the driver door and where do they fit in to riders using the systems daily? Most of the time they aren't counted.

End of the day, its a guessing game to say X riders use the system or even boarding especially using all doors for any type of vehicle.
 
raptor said:
Looks like they've stopped showing ridership for Niagara Falls station, to save their face.
The excuse: "** Niagara WEGO partnership ridership is included. Because we do not know the station customers come from all boardings and alightings are attributed to Niagara GO. Child boardings have been removed for consistency with Kids GO Free. "
Click to expand...
It probably could be double Niagara boardings/disembarkations, if the Niagara trains could stop in Hamilton. There is use for Niagara->Hamilton and Hamilton->Niagara.

I mean, existing train goes centimeters past existing station because of 2015 decisions, CN, and politics -- maddening to many Hamiltonians to the point where they've lost hope for Niagara service.

At least, they'll finally solve that with a cheap concrete pour for a north platform in 2020.

Once this is fixed, some advertising will be needed to tell Hamilton that there are finally almost a thousand trains per year (936 to be exact, assuming current 2 trains per weekday and current 8 trains per weekend) that stops at West Harbour GO that either are heading to Niagara Falls, or originating from Niagara Falls.
 
Last edited:
hw621 said:
it is interesting that Unionville ridership dropped. It probably shows where the passengers originate.
Click to expand...

I suspect it's because of the mid-day train service being extended to Mount Joy. You can see all the northern Markham stations gained a bunch of ridership. In most cases, riders would just drive to Unionville instead of to a more northern stop where they would need to catch a bus and then transfer to the train at Unionville. It also goes to show how much of the ridership will be north of where the eventual 15-minute service will end.
 
I appreciate the visualization by way of different sizes circles for varying ridership. But something seems up with it. I see larger circles with ridership lower than other circles. Also didn't realize Barrie's daily avg was that low. Still wonder if it was a worthy recipient of electrification+RER compared with spreading that money to other unfunded GO projects.
 
44 North said:
I appreciate the visualization by way of different sizes circles for varying ridership. But something seems up with it. I see larger circles with ridership lower than other circles. Also didn't realize Barrie's daily avg was that low. Still wonder if it was a worthy recipient of electrification+RER compared with spreading that money to other unfunded GO projects.
Click to expand...
Electrification of lines will benefit the line over time. Because of the cost to makeup and breakdown a train to meet ridership for x time and place, GO must use long trains that are mostly 12 cars long today.

If and when real EMU trains arrive, you can run trains in various size to meet the ridership demand. To meet increase ridership on higher section of the line, you can either run one type of service for it and another for the other section using different train size. Joining 2 EMU requires a lot less time and even short when breaking it apart.

As an example, you could run say a 3 car train connected to a 5 and 6 car train, with the the 3 car being cut off at X point to carry on to Barrie. The other 2 car train would return to Union and then back to X point where it would pickup that 3 car train if the connection time line up with it or another one. Another way is to have smaller trains that will meet ridership between Union and X point and run every 1 to 4th train to/from Barrie with a train layover at X point to fill the gap of that train to Barrie as well giving the crew a break.

Have seen train split apart in Europe where one short train go to Z while the other goes to P and join up on the return trip.

Quality of service will drive the demand for service. Even though hourly service is not great, it better than nothing, but there is a need to get it under 60 minutes to get people to use it. There is nothing stopping to having more service in the 15 minute window, but it has to be another type of service like mid to long station express. It goes back to my comments in 2007 when asked about adding more station on X line as well between existing ones.

As for circle showing less riders than they supposed to be, someone not on the ball to trying to skew things wrongly..
 
It just occurred to me that the latest ridership numbers include the Raptors parade. It's thus impossible to objectively pass judgement on them.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ack
hw621 said:
it is interesting that Unionville ridership dropped. It probably shows where the passengers originate.
Click to expand...
This is common if you extend service along the line.

The evening and mid-day extension of the GO train to mount pleasant means less people busing to Unionville.
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top