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Transit Ridership Statistics & Tracking

found some updated Burlington ridership statistics - it appears it's drasticly dropping ridership has stopped and the service has actually experienced some minor gains in the last two years. The document it's from (a handout from a consultation for future service improvements) also states that they will finally start using the south bus terminal at Burlington GO in September.

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raptor said:
Latest GO Transit ridership:
https://metrolinx.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/click-here-for-the-latest-ridership-map.pdf
Click to expand...
Ah interesting. For reference the two-month earlier version is at https://metrolinx.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/click-right-here-for-our-ridership-map.pdf

I'm not sure what the green ridership change is being compared to. It's not to November 2018. For example St. Catherines decreased from 18 riders a day to 14 riders a day, but the "ridership change" increased from 5.4% to 5.9%.

West Harbour reduced from 58 riders a day to 57 riders a day, but the "ridership change" decreased from 6.3% to 5.2%.

I'm not even sure what the "average daily" is measuring. Normally it's a typical week day. But every line is down from November, and Union is down from 75.2K to 73K. It's almost like they divided by total days, including holidays (Christmas week!) etc. ... which would be very unusual!

The only thing I see that bucks the trend is Downsview Park, which increased 280 to 285 riders a day! So that's positive.
 
nfitz said:
Ah interesting. For reference the two-month earlier version is at https://metrolinx.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/click-right-here-for-our-ridership-map.pdf

I'm not sure what the green ridership change is being compared to. It's not to November 2018. For example St. Catherines decreased from 18 riders a day to 14 riders a day, but the "ridership change" increased from 5.4% to 5.9%.

West Harbour reduced from 58 riders a day to 57 riders a day, but the "ridership change" decreased from 6.3% to 5.2%.

I'm not even sure what the "average daily" is measuring. Normally it's a typical week day. But every line is down from November, and Union is down from 75.2K to 73K. It's almost like they divided by total days, including holidays (Christmas week!) etc. ... which would be very unusual!

The only thing I see that bucks the trend is Downsview Park, which increased 280 to 285 riders a day! So that's positive.
Click to expand...
The % change is from April 2018 to January 2019 (Article here)
 
nfitz said:
Ah interesting. For reference the two-month earlier version is at https://metrolinx.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/click-right-here-for-our-ridership-map.pdf

I'm not sure what the green ridership change is being compared to. It's not to November 2018. For example St. Catherines decreased from 18 riders a day to 14 riders a day, but the "ridership change" increased from 5.4% to 5.9%.
Click to expand...

I believe the %age is a year over year change and there is no seasonable adjustment.

Anyway, earlier in the year it might have been 17 riders to 18 riders and now, due to a repeating seasonal change (where 4 riders only take the train part of the year), it's 13 riders to 14 riders. Basically, the station gained ~1 rider per day year round but the percentage fluctuates a bit because it's worth more during the lower ridership periods.

Also worth noting, the "riders a day" value is rounded to whole numbers but the %age is calculated based on a fraction.
 
rbt said:
Anyway, earlier in the year it might have been 17 riders to 18 riders and now, due to a repeating seasonal change (where 4 riders only take the train part of the year), it's 13 riders to 14 riders
Click to expand...
As the average is down (or unchanged when large numbers are rounded) for each and every station other than Downsview Park, I don't think the average is reflecting recent daily ridership. I'm guessing here, but it feels more simply the total number of riders, divided by the total number of days. Rather than representing a typical work-day, which would be more useful data.
 
nfitz said:
As the average is down (or unchanged when large numbers are rounded) for each and every station other than Downsview Park, I don't think the average is reflecting recent daily ridership. I'm guessing here, but it feels more simply the total number of riders, divided by the total number of days. Rather than representing a typical work-day, which would be more useful data.
Click to expand...

Yes, that's exactly it. We determined with a previous report that it included (in the daily average) both weekends and special/seasonal trains otherwise stations on the Niagara line would have had near zero ridership before that single weekday train.
 
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raptor said:
The % change is from April 2018 to January 2019 (Article here)
Click to expand...

"...However, nothing puts the chill on a daily commute like a snow storm. Twenty-six centimetres of snow fell on Jan. 29th, leading to the first school closure for the Toronto District School Board in eight years. Many other school districts in the region followed suit.

As a result, GO Transit saw a ridership decrease of 103,000, or 36 per cent, as parents and care givers stayed home to look after their children...."

Let's blame the messenger (AKA weather meteorologist) for that.
 
https://stevemunro.ca/2019/04/02/metropass-two-hour-transfer-and-presto/

Steve Munro I would argue is a "heavy" metropass user. And yet he took an average of 86 trips per month (with his admitted bias to extra trips due to the 2 hour window). Lets assume if we remove this bias under the old fare rules he would travel only 80. And in the summer there is more options (walking) plus vacations so his yearly average I expect would drop to around 70-75.

This is the average of what the TTC was using to measure Metropass riders. What a sham

It will be interesting to see the revised counts with (1) 2 hour passes and (2) real Metropass counts. Could be a drop as high as 15%.
 
The adoption of Presto has been interesting for many reasons. One of them that I have observed most is how it changes streetcar fare payment behaviour.

Multiple friends have admitted to me that they just stopped paying on streetcars altogether, because: (1) they can't get to the tap-on because of crowding; or (2) there is no point, because they must tap on again once they reach the station. I suspect that in many cases (such as Spadina or Union stations) when you enter a paid-zone, this behaviour would count as a lost-fare for the TTC.

The international best-practice is of course, to force off-board fare payment at the streetcar stop in order to avoid all these issues. Not only do you simplify the fare payment process, you greatly reduce the dwell time at each stop.
 
Axf4ever said:
The increase in ridership to Pearson is crazy, I think the "Union Station West" plan that's been talked about make a ton a sense seeing that Pearson is already up to 1.1m trips vs Unions 1.8m
Click to expand...

That's the UPX number for Union. The Union GO Train ridership (not including the 1.8M UPX) is 22.5M per annum.

That said, Pearson transit station with all connections has potential to match Don Mills (10M) or Kipling (13M) subway stations, so the station is a reasonable investment (some of the planned routes are overkill).
 
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