The usual lrt spin at work. The 1,000 daily new riders is really 1,000 new one-way trips, or 500 daily round trip riders. They are not necessarily switching from cars, they are just people who didn't previously make the trip by transit (by FTA definition). This includes people who had no car and decided to take lrt when they wouldn't have taken the bus.
In case you don't want to think hard on the math, assuming that all of the "new" riders did so during the 3-hour rush periods in the morning and afternoon, that would be 167 riders per hour or under three per minute. Remember that it is quite possible for a former car passenger to switch to the lrt and the car would still be used by the driver, resulting in no fewer cars on the road. I doubt that most observers would notice the absence of three cars per minute along Highway 55/Hiawatha during rush hours. Remember too, that the average number of people per car during rush hour is about 1.6 people, so 500 riders might be no more than 313 cars. Of course, it is possible that much of the increased ridership might take place during hours when the service frequency is better than that of the existing bus service. The computer-modelled data submitted with the submission to the FTA supposed that regional passenger vehicle miles travelled would decrease 21.8 million a year as opposed to a bus alternative. That's out of 26 billion, or .0834 percent. If you multipled the number of daily passenger vehicle trips here (10 million), you would get 8,340 so obviously Jennifer's 1,000 trips figure is not in line with the model's optimistic figures. Note too, that the projected ridership increase over 17 years is only 25% or so, about 1.5% a year UN-compounded. Hardly inspiring when you consider that the regional population is projected by the met council to increase by 20% or so. Where is the future increase in ridership over population growth? The bus ridership will grow at the same rate, or even higher, if the money being thrown at rail were first spent to more than double the number of buses being operated, to benefit more than 90% of the riders, rather than far less than 10% of the current bus ridership. Bruce Gaarder Highland Park Saint Paul [EMAIL PROTECTED] Jennifer wrote: > The line will attract 1,000 daily new riders (riders who previously drove autos). That's about 300,000 new rides each year. The balance of the ridership would be from existing transit riders switching or transferring to the new LRT line. _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
