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I'm seeing projections of just "late 2021" and I assume that means more like November or December, and possibly around the end of December, rather than some time in the summer.
I'm in the process of moving down the street from one of these new trolley stations....they are very coy about announcing a date in all of the press releases. One thing is for sure, they look primed to be absolutely slammed with riders from opening day.
Its going to be a very steep hill for Seattle to climb just to match (despite the fact they are a larger metro area).
In a few months San Diego is opening an 11-mile extension to University City, the region's largest employment cluster and home to a major university. It is forecast to generate 20-35K more trolley riders per day. Seattle isn't likely to catch up until ~2030.
It sucks COVID will probably take a chunk out of that projection for a while. I think it had the possibility to exceed it. I lived two years on UCSD/in UTC without a car and that would have been a god send to have that. This is long overdue and its great that area is finally being connected to the Trolley system.
A Coaster tunnel with a station at UTC would be even better but I doubt that will ever happen.
6-8 months is certainly a few months in the context of a 60-month project. What difference does it make anyways? Time to debate what “a few” means?
I guess there are different definitions of few. In terms of what difference it makes, it could make a difference in terms of which system goes out on top for at least Q4 2021 between Seattle and San Diego since a late December opening as opposed to a late August opening means that ridership contributions from the expansion don't factor much into this year. However, it seems very likely that SD's light rail ridership will be ahead of Seattle's next year. It doesn't mean that much, but this topic does kind of lend itself to drilling down to specifics since the thread title starts off with light rail ridership numbers for a single quarter of a year.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Losfrisco
I'm in the process of moving down the street from one of these new trolley stations....they are very coy about announcing a date in all of the press releases. One thing is for sure, they look primed to be absolutely slammed with riders from opening day.
Its going to be a very steep hill for Seattle to climb just to match (despite the fact they are a larger metro area).
Seems like it'll give a very sizable boost to ridership. I don't think it's too likely for Seattle's system to beat SD's ridership this year, though there's maybe a chance of it beating SD's for Q4 provided that Seattle completes its extension on time and SD's extension opens very late in the year or even gets pushed to next. I think then SD remains firmly ahead up until one or two of the other four Seattle extensions that are under construction open up. If I had to take a guess for light rail ridership for this year and next
2021:
- LA
- Boston
- San Diego
- San Francisco
- Portland
2022:
- LA
- Boston
- San Francisco
- San Diego
- Seattle
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 04-26-2021 at 11:56 AM..
I'm in the process of moving down the street from one of these new trolley stations....they are very coy about announcing a date in all of the press releases. One thing is for sure, they look primed to be absolutely slammed with riders from opening day.
I think it will be quite busy too. I'm sure you saw that Apple just announced they are quadrupling the size of their planned engineering hub in San Diego. They have 1,000 local employees already and are going to add 4,000 more. I'm curious whether they will add those jobs to University City, closer to the Blue line...
Quote:
Its going to be a very steep hill for Seattle to climb just to match (despite the fact they are a larger metro area).
I don't think it's a steep hill for Seattle as there is already demonstrated transit ridership/demand. Shouldn't be difficult to get some commuters to switch from bus to rail. Also, the geography and road network of the region will make the LINK system perform very well. Sound Transit is designing a very good system and the region/local jurisdictions are allowing notable density around new stations.
Ridership should far exceed San Diego's (assuming SD doesn't expand simultaneously)
It sucks COVID will probably take a chunk out of that projection for a while. I think it had the possibility to exceed it. I lived two years on UCSD/in UTC without a car and that would have been a god send to have that. This is long overdue and its great that area is finally being connected to the Trolley system.
I've also lived a car-free life in the UTC/UCSD area. It's not the most traditionally walkable place, but there are a lot of amenities and the bus services are pretty frequent.
My relatives who do not like driving also live next to one of the stations and they will definitely be using it.
University Link in Seattle also opened, so some pretty big developments in a fairly short amount of time. There was a discussion earlier about whether it was at all possible for Seattle's light rail system to have a better Q4 in 2021 than San Diego's in terms of ridership and I was saying that it's possible provided Seattle opens early in or before the quarter (it did open early in the quarter on October 2nd) and San Diego's opened late or not at all. San Diego's extension opened on the 23rd.
Los Angeles 6,312,000
San Diego 5,563,500
Boston 4,170,500
Portland 3,802,300
Dallas 3,601,200
Newark 3,439,400
San Francisco 2,650,600
Twin Cities 2,423,200
Denver 2,170,100
Philadelphia 2,122,700
Houston 2,054,000
Salt Lake City 1,853,200
Seattle 1,781,600
By percentage from the previous year, SF and Seattle's system got hit the hardest (and San Diego's among those who saw the smallest slumps), so I suspect that with more service back on line, the 3rd quarter should have seen a pretty good rebound for SF and Seattle though APTA hasn't released those yet.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 11-26-2021 at 10:18 PM..
The extended blue line to UTC will be well utilized from both those in the East county as well downtown to the border. We rode it on its inaugural day last Sunday, impressive infrastructure and a great boon for the region. 3/4 of people in the city here though will swear to you that NOBODY rides transit here.
It’s far from perfect and absolutely is not the answer for many but it is nonetheless a vital component to a successful, growing region and economy.
The extended blue line to UTC will be well utilized from both those in the East county as well downtown to the border. We rode it on its inaugural day last Sunday, impressive infrastructure and a great boon for the region. 3/4 of people in the city here though will swear to you that NOBODY rides transit here.
It’s far from perfect and absolutely is not the answer for many but it is nonetheless a vital component to a successful, growing region and economy.
Reminds me of when the Green Line opened in 2005 when I was living in Santee at the time. I rode it during the inaugural weekend and was pretty impressed, especially with the SDSU station that looked like a subway. If I still lived in SD I would ride it to UTC. I remember also living in or visiting the Clairemont area and having to take the bus to Linda Vista. This would be a huge game changer for the area.
My guess is that there's a strong correlation between light rail ridership during the pandemic and the income/type of work of most riders. Higher income riders tended to have jobs where they could work from home or have cars so that they could drive to work. What's left are riders that have jobs where they have to go into work and they don't have a car as an option. In LA the overwhelming number of train riders are poor or working poor. The relatively few riders that aren't abandoned public transportation in 2020. From what I saw, Seattle has much more balance, so all of the choice riders leaving would be a much higher percentage. San Diego is probably more like LA.
My guess is that there's a strong correlation between light rail ridership during the pandemic and the income/type of work of most riders. Higher income riders tended to have jobs where they could work from home or have cars so that they could drive to work. What's left are riders that have jobs where they have to go into work and they don't have a car as an option. In LA the overwhelming number of train riders are poor or working poor. The relatively few riders that aren't abandoned public transportation in 2020. From what I saw, Seattle has much more balance, so all of the choice riders leaving would be a much higher percentage. San Diego is probably more like LA.
I also think some places didn't take lockdowns and the pandemic as seriously as others, some places are more reliant on international travelers, and some places have larger student populations that make use of mass transit (and some of which did not have their students come back in person for broad lengths especially those with large international student populations).
I think there's a pretty good chance that San Diego's keeps its edge over Boston's from the first half of this year and actually ends the year with the number two US light rail slot for 2021 especially with the opening of the Mid-Coast Trolley and the day of free rides and a bump in publicity. I think Boston's probably recovered more heavily over Q3 and the current Q4, but maybe not enough to make up the difference from the first half of the year. I also want to note that the APTA's listing for Newark is a bit deceptive as it combines what are three essentially separate systems within the state of New Jersey with the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail, Newark Light Rail, and River Line systems. Most of the ridership was probably Hudson-Bergen Light Rail though.
Despite the still rather grim outlook for ridership this year (but much improved from last year), the latter half of this year as well as the coming year are seeing the debut of significant light rail expansions across the US.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 11-27-2021 at 11:29 PM..
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