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Does this include commuter rail VRE and MARC for D.C. or Ride On Bus which is Montgomery Counties (85k ridership) own bus system?
I don't know about DC, but I can tell you for Chicago that it's only including the CTA system. The Metra commuter rail trains and the Pace suburban buses weren't counted.
That can't be true. Right off the bet the NYC segment of NJT, Metro North, and LIRR individually should be well above Caltrain. That's 3 for NYC. So Bay Area should be around #7. Also, including Capitol Corridor into your numbers is iffy, since its Amtrack, but w/e.
NJT Commuter rail for NYC is probably a tad larger than Chicago as a stand alone - maybe like 5% at best of NJT Commuter rail serves the Philly metro
NJT Commuter rail for NYC is probably a tad larger than Chicago as a stand alone - maybe like 5% at best of NJT Commuter rail serves the Philly metro
I wouldn't be surprised, since the gap between NYC and the rest of the country is huge. When it comes to commuter rail, NYC area has higher ridership than all other US commuter rail lines combined, and it is split fairly evenly between 3 systems.
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Originally Posted by MDAllstar
Does this include commuter rail VRE and MARC for D.C. or Ride On Bus which is Montgomery Counties (85k ridership) own bus system? There are so many indepent bus systems to count. Farifax, Arlington, Alexandria, and PG County have their own too.
It does, but I may have missed Fairfax.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gantz
That can't be true. Right off the bet the NYC segment of NJT, Metro North, and LIRR individually should be well above Caltrain. That's 3 for NYC. So Bay Area should be around #7. Also, including Capitol Corridor into your numbers is iffy, since its Amtrack, but w/e.
They are sorta right, but you and kidphilly are correct: Outside of NYC, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, and New Jersey it's not really worth mentioning commuter rail statistics since it's so lopsided.
For those who are curious, here are the full rankings:
1. NYC (LIRR, Metro-North, New Jersey Transit Corp*) - 934,700
2. Chicago (Metra and South Shore Line)- 302,300
3. Philadelphia (SEPTA) - 134,600
4. Boston - 130,600
5. Bay Area (Caltrain, CCJP) - 61200
6. DC-Baltimore - 53,100
7. Los Angeles - 41,200
8. Salt Lake City - 16,800
9. Miami - 14,000
10. Seattle - 13,700
*NJT didn't provide their daily numbers, but they have about the same monthly volume as Metro-North, so this is a estimate. This traffic is also split between NYC and Philadelphia as well as points in between, but as you mentioned earlier it is probably 95% of this traffic is going to NYC.
After this there are a little over a dozen commuter rail lines in various cities around the country, but they only amount to a few thousand (and several around 1000) passengers a day. Clearly for the Bay Area, this isn't something that really makes a huge difference. There is just one tiny problem though.
Another point to consider when ranking commuter rail networks is that there are three systems in this country (the Bay's BART, DC's METRO, and Atlanta's MARTA) that were all designed to be hybrid commuter rail and central city subway systems. Technically speaking, you could also rank the ridership for those three systems in the commuter rail rankings AND the heavy rail subway rankings. With that frame of thought DC would move to second on the list, the Bay would go third, Chicago would fall to fourth, and Atlanta be fifth.
This isn't just an postulation either. While it is hard case to make for Atlanta (while it was designed to be a hybrid, it only reaches the inner ring suburbs and was reconfigured to primarily serve the central city) and a little tough for DC (Metro has great coverage in both the city and suburbs), BART is primarily used to ferry people directly in to San Francisco from around the Bay while MUNI the primary mass transit in San Francisco for every day use.
Personally though, I wouldn't count BART primarily as a commuter rail system. Between San Fran and Oakland it's more subway and that's probably where most of the traffic comes from.
Maybe on some reporting MUNI combines trolley bus and streetcar numbers, but for the purposes of APTA the two are separated since they are counted as two different modes of transport.
Except it doesn't. The APTA wouldn't accept that anyways I'm pretty sure. If light rail and trolleybus numbers were combined in this report for Muni, with proper numbers, it would total around 400,000 riders...yet the numbers in this report have light rail ridership at only 128,000 (obviously way too low, by about 100,000 riders), and the trolley bus numbers aren't even available for SF in the report (which total nearly 200,000 riders).
That can't be true. Right off the bet the NYC segment of NJT, Metro North, and LIRR individually should be well above Caltrain. That's 3 for NYC. So Bay Area should be around #7. Also, including Capitol Corridor into your numbers is iffy, since its Amtrack, but w/e.
I Agree...im confused because the ranking lumped all of the Bay Area groups together. Why ? Is the question. If that's the case then PATCO / NJT A.C. LINE , RIVERLINE & BUS SERVICE IN SOUTH JERSEY Should go to Philadelphia (based on the region) ......and PATH , NJT Commuter rail, HBLR , NWK SUBWAY should go to New York City numbers then.
I also heard that NEW JERSEY TRANSIT Doesn't release their numbers or they cant be in the rankings of the metro agencies because they are a state transit authority. All the NE railroads is well above Caltrain. I always thought it was weird that NJT COMMUTER RAIL Was never on these list...because it does exist and serve two big regions on the ends of New Jersey.
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Originally Posted by rah
Except it doesn't. The APTA wouldn't accept that anyways I'm pretty sure. If light rail and trolleybus numbers were combined in this report for Muni, with proper numbers, it would total around 400,000 riders...yet the numbers in this report have light rail ridership at only 128,000 (obviously way too low, by about 100,000 riders), and the trolley bus numbers aren't even available for SF in the report (which total nearly 200,000 riders).
Except I wasn't suggesting that APTA combined the numbers. I was speaking of another report the poster had saw that showed higher MUNI ridership, so I was suggesting that MUNI combines the numbers. It is important to keep in mind that the numbers in the APTA report or self reported.
Actually, we can put away this "debate" and talk specifics. I did a little digging, and while I wasn't able to find data specific to 2014 I did find it for 2013. According to this article (http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancis...nt?oid=2729689), MUNI had a total ridership in 2013 of 701,000.
Taking that knowledge, let's look at the daily numbers for MUNI that were actually reported:
MUNI Streetcars: 128,500
MUNI Gas Buses: 300,900
On the APTA report, while they daily trolley bus numbers arent broken out specifically, they do have the monthly volume listed. That number is 64081400 for 2014, so dividing that by 240 (weekdays only), that gets us to ~267,000, or 696,405 total for all of MUNI.
This however wouldn't change the ranking from the OP. I did account for the trolley bus daily numbers not being there using the same method I just used (I forgot I did that when this came up earlier in the thread ).
Don't worry though Bay Area peeps, you still get to cheer about something. Los Angeles only has superior public transit numbers than the Bay Area in raw numbers. In terms of the percentage of the population in each metro area, the Bay Area is far ahead of Los Angeles. Of two places have a daily ridership of 1.5 million, but one of those places is a metro of 7 million and other is a metro of 18 million, who wins. It's pretty obvious.
That would be another interesting way to look at these rankings, but I don't really have time to do it now. Maybe if someone was kind of enough to that we can put this hair splitting to rest. (Maybe not since this is City-vs-city and every hair must split)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sammy215267
I Agree...im confused because the ranking lumped all of the Bay Area groups together. Why ? Is the question. If that's the case then PATCO / NJT A.C. LINE , RIVERLINE & BUS SERVICE IN SOUTH JERSEY Should go to Philadelphia (based on the region) ......and PATH , NJT Commuter rail, HBLR , NWK SUBWAY should go to New York City numbers then.
You are incorrect if you think they are separated. In the top 10 total, all of the various transit agencies for each metro (well, as best I could) were lumped together. Why? Because the various transit authorties in a single metro (ideally) are linked.
That can't be true. Right off the bet the NYC segment of NJT, Metro North, and LIRR individually should be well above Caltrain.
The three NYC-area commuter rail agencies are the three busiest in the U.S. The least busy of the three agencies has more than six times the ridership of Caltrain. Collectively they have over twenty times the ridership of Caltrain.
In fact, a single NYC-area line (the Metro North New Haven line) has about four times the ridership of Caltrain.
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