Yesterday, I received an email from Tom Bazan, an environmental consultant who recently tried but to run for Congress but who failed to get elected. Tom is quite good at staying in on the political grapevine and at gathering news. Tom's latest email had to do with our enemies at Metro and the Houston Chronicle who of course were instrumental at stuffing rail down our throats. Meanwhile, hay has been made about Houston being a fat city and the Chronicle had to make a point that Houston doesn't have much mass transit - although it didn't say that Metro could afford to run more buses if it hadn't decided to build light rail. Meanwhile, the Houston Press, which seems to have taken a turn towards being more mainstream itself, has a crew of political writers who seem to enjoy picking on people such as myself. The HP also thinks light rail is the most wonderful thing since buttered bread. When it rains, it pours...
But back to Tom Bazan's email, which was the subject of this epistle. Tom sent out his first statistics on light rail patronage for this year. The results are below:
A comparison of the average daily ridership for the first twelve months of operation is shown below:
Average Weekday Average Saturday Average Sunday Total Monthly
2004
Jan 12,102 19,936 21,712 554,135
Feb 12,290 16,791 11,030 418,093
Mar 12,958 16,604 17,659 604,328
Apr 14,043 10,380 7,251 379,465
May 14,060 8,809 8,083 375,287
Jun 26,677 13,578 9,379 678,728
Jul 29,570 14,862 10,574 754,141
Aug 29,400 17,525 9,500 764,408
Sep 32,292 13,724 11,960 817,020
Oct 32,941 15,314 10,810 853,542
Nov 29,782 13,380 8,830 761,718
Dec 29,175 13,780 8,756 730,900
Some caveats. The main leap in patronage, which occurred between May and June of this year, is explained by Metro following the now well established tactic of cutting bus service in areas where newly built light rail is built. Also, bus lines run to the light rail, which forces patrons to use the light rail to complete their journeys. Bus service to much of the downtown areas was cut in May and June 2004. Also, bus routes which had marginal patronage, but were still being run, were also terminated in the latter half of 2004. Again, Metro is following the "mass transit playbook" by the letter.
More commentary to follow on these numbers.
Ciao for now...
TMW
Posted by The Mighty Wizard at January 8, 2005 11:43 AM