Metro to study declining ridership
by Owen Courrèges · 02/28/2005 12:45 pmAnne Linehan points out an interesting action taken Metro’s board of directors:
The board authorized spending $250,000 for a survey firm to research why transit ridership has gone down in recent years and what Metro can do to attract more passengers.
Why didn’t they just ask me? I could tell them — transit ridership has been declining nationally since the 1960’s. It’s only seen increases in a handful of cities.
Another problem is that Metro seems to believe that building rail — and not providing cheaper, more efficient bus service — is the means by which to grow its ridership base. However, the fact is that most people who use public transit will always be those who can’t afford to purchase and maintain a car. When you cut bus routes and increase fares, they’re more likely to use transit less or not at all (cutting trips and/or resorting to car-pooling). Metro has shown that it doesn’t care about its actual ridership base, and instead is fishing for yuppies. They’re not getting many bites, and they never will.
Finally, it doesn’t help when Metro is unrepentant about using cost-ineffective programs (remember, former Metro Chair Bob Miller publicly admitted that, dollar for dollar, funding for buses transports people more effectively than light rail). If you aren’t spending your money in the most cost-efficient manner, should you really be shocked when you start losing customers? This is basic economics, people! No need to spend $250,000 to figure this one out…
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In the past year Metro has changed bus routes that used to come downtown. Now their buses drop people off at the light rail stations to get downtown. Those same people used to be able to transfer to the trolley to get to work (since not everyone works on Main Street). Now that the St. Joseph/Preston trolley (for instance)doesn’t run in the mornings and afternoons anymore, it doesn’t make sense to use Metro, especially in bad weather. The people I work with don’t want to leave home 30-45 minutes earlier to make the same trip and get wet/frozen by the time they’re due at the office! BTW, I went to the Town Hall that Metro “put on” last year and heard a hundred or so people begging Metro not to cancel their routes. Nothing changed. Metro just ignored the plight of those who depend most on mass transit.
Go to Sunday’s chronic(al) and look at the Metro RFP. Have you ridden metro lately? Metro is NOT maintaining thier equipment at all. The low floor models have known rear suspension and electrical problems that are ignored so the coaches hit the road. Can you think of a day that a metro bus does not stop running in the HOV lane? Do you think this may affect ridership?
My personal ridership has gone down since I was a kid because my income has grown and I can afford a car. As a teenager, when I needed to go downtown I took the bus because our family had only one car. Later when I had my own car I drove most places I wanted to go. I went when I wanted and parked near the front door of where I was going. Declining public transit ridership is at least partially impacted by growing affluence of the population.