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No. Not ridership, but transit share. Transit share is the number of residents who commute to work via transit. Ridership will obviously include any tourist from Iowa who ventures up to Yankee Stadium.
I was never much of a weekend subway rider anyway, but Uber and Lyft have all but assured that I will never be on a train on a Saturday. That's probably true for many others across the land.
Okay, but that's even more confusing. If transit share is the percentage of people using the transit system for the commute and tourism is in record numbers and the number of people moving into this city has grown and yet the absolute mass transit ridership numbers are down, then something really odd is happening. Where is your comparative transit share numbers coming from? Can you post a link?
If we're just talking about commuters, then maybe we're talking about how local restaurants and the like are opening up nearby so more people can just stay in the neighborhood for the weekend to buy stuff or have a night out? I think that could make sense. That's certainly much more the case in the urban core of Los Angeles than it has been in the past.
Again, I expect transit ridership to decline with the rise of ridesharing apps. What's unusual in LA's case is that its transit share has dropped. Other than Detroit, I haven't seen in any other major cities that have fewer transit commuters today than they did 5 years ago.
A quick glace at census data between 2013-2016 shows the share of transit commuters going down slightly in DC and NYC as well, anywhere from .3% to .8%. I'd imagine other cities have experienced similar declines in transit share.
One thing though: I do expect absolute transit ridership numbers for LA to go way up in a pretty short amount of time due to how bad the congestion has gotten, the rate of infill being created with a mixed-use neighborhood slant, and the slate of mass transit projects currently under construction. There's some deus ex machina stuff like the end of the world or massive economic collapse that can derail that, but aside from that and something ridiculous like Elon Musk's giant web of underground tunnels being used for private vehicles exclusively, things are generally looking up for living carless (I take that to mean without your own car; otherwise I'm not carless in NYC either because I've certainly taken cabs and ridershare rides).
I don't understand something here. If the metros listed in that citylab articles such as DC, Boston, and Philadelphia are all growing in population, but their absolute ridership counts are down from the previous year, then how can they not be experiencing transit share percentage drops? If the denominator (your total population) is getting bigger and the numerator (absolute transit ridership numbers) are getting smaller, then how are you not getting a smaller number?
WMATA ridership isn't limited to people who live in the District of Columbia. Let's say someone who lives in Reston, VA gets a new job out in the suburbs. Or decides to make the drive into Downtown instead of taking Metro. There might be thousands of people with similar circumstances that would drive a decline in overall ridership. But that would have no impact on DC's transit share. Transit share is the % of residents in a given jurisdiction who commute to work by transit.
WMATA ridership isn't limited to people who live in the District of Columbia. Let's say someone who lives in Reston, VA gets a new job out in the suburbs. Or decides to make the drive into Downtown instead of taking Metro. There might be thousands of people with similar circumstances that would drive a decline in overall ridership. But that would have no impact on DC's transit share. Transit share is the % of residents in a given jurisdiction who commute to work by transit.
I see, well, it's a mystery, but talking about it interesting. Just so you know, Los Angeles Country transit also services a lot of territory outside of Los Angeles proper since it covers the county rather than just the city. Also, if we get back to the topic, my argument is for just the expanse of people living in the urban core and that includes parts that are technically part of Los Angeles the city and parts that are other municipalities, it also excludes a massive chunk of Los Angeles the city.
Where are you grabbing your transit share numbers for city propers? At what time periods?
A quick glace at census data between 2013-2016 shows the share of transit commuters going down slightly in DC and NYC as well, anywhere from .3% to .8%. I'd imagine other cities have experienced similar declines in transit share.
Yes, share has gone down. I meant to say raw numbers.
American Community Survey. See the numbers I posted above.
Oh, I see, but those are also raw numbers. The shares are probably as you say. You should note though that NYC's subway drop is from 2015 to 2016 and and then again from 2016 to 2017 so I guess you can argue LA was getting "ahead of the curve"? Not a great win though. There's some chance subway ridership might go up from 2017 to 2018 since they opened an extension, but that might be a lot of nothing since a lot of that ridership was probably using buses or getting to the Lexington Avenue line stations anyhow. Plus, the delays have gotten terrible.
Regardless, I still think the urban core of Los Angeles is better for going car-free than Miami and it's making a lot of improvements at a rapid clip. I don't think rideshare usage is necessarily antithetical to the city forming better urban neighborhoods.
Oh, I see, but those are also raw numbers. The shares are probably as you say. You should note though that NYC's subway drop is from 2015 to 2016 and and then again from 2016 to 2017 so I guess you can argue LA was getting "ahead of the curve"? Not a great win though.
BTW the reason I even looked it up was that we had gone through the tedious process of finding transit/car ownership stats for LA's core a while ago and I had forgotten all about that until I saw this thread. I decided to see where transit share/numbers were and was surprised to see the number of transit commuters go down. You almost never see that except in cases like Detroit or Cleveland. That was why I mentioned it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OyCrumbler
Regardless, I still think the urban core of Los Angeles is better for going car-free than Miami and it's making a lot of improvements at a rapid clip. I don't think rideshare usage is necessarily antithetical to the city forming better urban neighborhoods.
I don't disagree with that though one significant aspect of living a car-free lifestyle to many people will be "Will I need a car to get to work?" The question of whether LA is better for car-free living is best left to someone more familiar with both cities, but the data is a helpful starting point in determining how easy/difficult it might be to completely dispose of a vehicle in either city. That said, it's not like Miami is a beast when it comes to transit share, so this is not an issue that's going to move the needle.
Anyhow--I think the most puzzling thing is how is Los Angeles going to deal with the increasingly large homeless population of which a few are quite aggressive. This is for the city overall, but they are most concentrated in the most urban parts of the city. What is especially puzzling is how Los Angeles will figure out what to do with Skid Row in downtown which is pretty massive and surrounded by a lot of buzzy new development.
I remember staying in Edgewater in Miami and walking to Wynwood all the time and there was also quite a large amount of homeless people, but those people seemed mostly less aggressive and fewer in number/density than the homeless population in many parts of Los Angeles.
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