Encouraging News, courtesy of ProgressiveRailroading

[jg greenwood]

http://www.progressiverailroading.com/p ... sp?id=8662

[Robert Paniagua]

Wow, that's good news about the Ridership. At first, it was 5000 passengers a month when it first opened to this now. That's awesome to hear.

[Sand Box John]

I hate to burst everybody’s bubble here but the actual average daily WMATA metrorail boardings are in the area 2 1/2 million boardings short of what was projected for the full 98 mile system when the planners were promoting the project back in the 1960s. Even the record 850,636 boardings during the Ronald Reagan State Funeral was in the area of 2 million boardings short of the projected daily average.

I will also note that when WMATA records higher then average and or record daily boardings on metrorail they issue a press release.

http://www.wmata.com/about/MET_NEWS/Pre ... aseID=1178

Ever one of the records in that top 10 list has it’s own press release along with at least a dozen others that have been knocked off the list.

Please don’t take this as some kind of bash of WMATA because it’s not meant to be. I am quite happy that metrorail was and is able to post these boarding numbers. I am only pointing out documented facts.

[Robert Paniagua]

Oh, don't worry, this isn't about bashing the ridership issue here

[octr202]

I hate to burst everybody’s bubble here but the actual average daily WMATA metrorail boardings are in the area 2 1/2 million boardings short of what was projected for the full 98 mile system when the planners were promoting the project back in the 1960s. Even the record 850,636 boardings during the Ronald Reagan State Funeral was in the area of 2 million boardings short of the projected daily average.

I will also note that when WMATA records higher then average and or record daily boardings on metrorail they issue a press release.

http://www.wmata.com/about/MET_NEWS/Pre ... aseID=1178

Ever one of the records in that top 10 list has it’s own press release along with at least a dozen others that have been knocked off the list.

Please don’t take this as some kind of bash of WMATA because it’s not meant to be. I am quite happy that metrorail was and is able to post these boarding numbers. I am only pointing out documented facts.

With all that said, we should also consider that the "science" of modelling travel patterns and predicting ridership involves a lot of guess work, particularly at a time in the 1960s when few (okay, any?) examples of truly modern mass transit to compare the Metro to, and also before there was any modern transit service in the DC area. Ridership projections for new projects seem to fall into two categories, way under reality or way over.

As much as I'd rather spend the day looking for data to back this up, I don't have the time. But, I would bet that over the last 30-40 years, the average mass tranist project's ridership projections are getting mroe and mroe accurate as we improve the modelling used, and get more data from more transit oeprations.

Also, I'm sure some of those wildly inflated numbers have caused newer start-ups to lower their projections, in order to lessen the ammunition for critics who say mass transit doesn't live up to its goals.

Fortunately, regardless of those projections of 40 years ago, its now accepted that DC would not be the city it is today without the Metro.

[Politburo]

Post above notes that there weren't too many transit systems when Metro was developed. I do wonder though, how did the planners think ~2.5 million daily boardings were going to physically happen? Never mind population estimates, etc.. I'm talking about the practicality of 2.5 million boardings. Across the 86 stations this is an average of 29,000 boardings/station/day. That is A LOT of boardings. It's (very roughly) in line with the number of people that NJ Transit takes into NYC each day.

[Sand Box John]

I Happen to believe those projection could have been closer to reality had the land use policies in the region been more closely tied to the devolvement of metrorail. Now I’m not talking the so called smart growth that is now the big rage in urban planning circles. Arlington County along the K Route Orange line and to a lesser extent Bethesda and Silver Spring are good examples where real estate devolvement was tied to metrorail. These are the exception to the rule of what the devolvement reality actually turned out to be. To put in to simple terms the left hand was not keeping track of what the right hand was doing.

Much of the commercial real estate devolvement in the Washington region has been wily nily plopped down where ever land was open and available. To give you an idea of what I am talking about. About 15 years ago I was out in Ashburn Virginia just north of Dulles Airport. AOL was in the process of constructing a new building to accommodate their expanding operation. The building was roughly 300’ off the road. On the land between the edge of the road and the building under construction was corn stalks left behind from the previous seasons harvest.

The growth of commercial real estate devolvement within Washington DC has been stifled by the high taxes levied by the DC government on commercial property and enterprises. This has forced much of the commercial real estate devolvement further out where land and property taxes are lower. What I lot of people don’t know is most of the nonprofit organization that have setup shop in the region to maintain contacts with the federal government are within Washington DC. The high concentration of these organizations further draining the DC government ability to levy taxes on commercial enterprises that would occupy that real estate.

The projection made in the FEIS of the Dulles Corridor Rapid Transit Project are much more conservative in my view then what I believe the actual numbers will turn out to be. The FEIS is projecting 59,000 of which 29,100 will be new trips when Wiehle Avenue opens in 2011 and 91,200 of which 47,800 will be new trips for the full 23 mile line in 2025.