Trains Magazine article...

On p.32 of the 1/07 issue of Trains, there is a feature called "America's Top 10 people movers". Metra weighs in at number 10, and among the statistics listed for each transit agency is the total number of railcars; the figure listed for Metra is 978. I think that might be a little misleading, because it seems to take into account all the cars on the property, whether active or not. A possible reason for the discrepancy could be that the 26 newest cars on the Electric District may have been lumped in with the entire 1501-1666 series, even though the oldest cars of the IC vintage brown & orange livery were displaced by the newer equipment. Coupled with other various retirements of some of the older Milwaukee/RI era Budd cars, the actual number of active cars is probably between 940-950 or so. Any other thoughts on this?

For being a Chicago passenger rail fan, I'm ashamed I don't know more than I do about the Metra roster. However, I think the survey of the top ten people mover railroads was silly, because some systems are non-FRA regulated mass-transit, IE CTA, NYCTA, WMATA; some systems were FRA-regulated legacy commuter systems like Metra, LIRR, MNCR, and some systems were hybrid, IE SEPTA. I think there should have been two different surveys: 1. the FRA-regulated traditional railroad systems - Metra, LIRR, VRE style; 2. non FRA-regulated light rail, trolley, subway such as CTA, WMATA... I can't imagine it's that hard to seperate hybrid systems such as SEPTA.

Also, my other personal gripe about what was a well-written issue: I hate when magazines to a top ten issue, and write a few paragraphs here and a few paragraphs there about each little topic. Maybe put one of the top states for each month over the next year and write a more substantive article?

Over at the MBTA forum, there was some discussion about their system's omission from the top ten list. Which was surprising, because they have a pretty extensive network of electric traction-based transit plus about 10 or 11 commuter rail lines, although I guess they may not have the population density of a NY or Philly. But you're right, the hybrid systems in Philly and Boston should've been treated differently, if only because those systems don't have seperate agencies running different parts of a network under one parent agency, as is the case with Metra's RTA, and the LIRR/MNCR operating under the MTA umbrella...

Hah, that was me over there bringing that up. I'm still thinking that Trains forgot altogether about the MBTA, because based on their formulas, some good esitmates put their combined rail totals somewhere between 195 million and 230 million a year, which is near the top. Two of our four rapid transit lines are well over 200,000 riders a day.

All in all, it seems like a bizarre comparison to make. Comparing Metra to the NYC subway is rather irrelevant, and as Dorian mentioned, its not that hard to seperate out the numbers by mode for SEPTA and the MBTA (should they include it). By their logic, the combined NY MTA operations really should have been one entry (still would have been in first place regardless, with the NYCTA in there), which would have shuffled the lineup a bit.