urbanSTL

Metro recently reported a .7% increase in weekday Metrolink ridership over the last 9 months to 53,022. Metrobus increased 4% to 95,702.

Didn't realize this until recently reading Railway Age, but Metrolink is the only interstate light rail system in the country.

wabash wrote:Metro recently reported a .7% increase in weekday Metrolink ridership over the last 9 months to 53,022. Metrobus increased 4% to 95,702.

Didn't realize this until recently reading Railway Age, but Metrolink is the only interstate light rail system in the country.

What about DC Metro? It goes through Maryland, DC and Virginia. I think Philly's light rail stretches to suburbs in New Jersey too.

DC Metro, SEPTA Regional Rail and PATCO are all technically heavy rail.

Way to shine in your moment in the spotlight!

Casey Nolen KSDK ‏@CaseyNolen

“@AnneAllredNBC: Metro link had lots of sick calls today- say won't be able to run extra trains for @FairSaintLouis @ksdknews”

Agreed. This whole incident goes to show how mismanaged Metro is; they still haven't figured out how to execute on the bare minimum requirements of an efficient transit system.

The media coverage of of the Fair, especially people riding MetroLink, has not included any people complaining about too few trains. Perhaps we should wait until this is over to rush to conclusions about it being mismanaged.

All Metro buses are running as planned.

Mass sick days should be unacceptable, If the workers who called off sick did it for labor reasons, this is one reason why people continue to distrust and even hold contempt for unions, especial public unions .

Agree on the sick days being unacceptable and I hope metro can deal with that internally. However, after taking the train from downtown to the Forest park stop and back for the fair last night I think they did a pretty good job. The line leaving was long but moved relatively quickly. They had a lot of staff/volunteers on hand to help with the line. The start of the line was not immediately clear which caused some confusion. My only major complaint, and this is as much about the people riding as it is metro, was some line jumping. A fair number of folks thought their time was more important than others. Security tried to keep an eye on it - some more than others - but it was a bit of a losing battle. Given the length of the line when we joined, I expected to be there much later.

dweebe wrote:

quincunx wrote:Way to shine in your moment in the spotlight!

Casey Nolen KSDK ‏@CaseyNolen

“@AnneAllredNBC: Metro link had lots of sick calls today- say won't be able to run extra trains for @FairSaintLouis @ksdknews”

Didn't the exact same thing happen on the day of the Cardinal home opener?

That was a labor action, IIRC. I have no idea what the reason behind the sick days this weekend was.

I think we should refrain from condemning hard working people before we actually know some facts.

The 2014 Metro Annual Report was recently released (see pages 148-150 for itemized ridership data).

Metrolink ridership grew 2.4% (an improvement over the .3% growth in fiscal year 2013).
Metrobus ridership grew 2.4% (an improvement over the 1% growth in fiscal year 2013).

Average weekday Metrolink ridership grew 1.9% to 54,111.
Average weekday Metrobus ridership grew 3.7% to 95,911.

Ridership on St. Clair Phase II (Emerson Park to Shiloh-Scott) grew 1.2%. (a decrease from the 3.6% growth in fiscal year 2013)
Ridership on Cross County grew 4.9% (an improvement over the .6% growth in the fiscal year 2013)
Ridership on the Original Red Line (5th & Missouri to Lambert-Main) grew by 2.2%. (an improvement over the -.4% decrease in fiscal 2013)

Interestingly, total passenger miles traveled was down 4.8% in 2014, after a huge 22.1% jump in 2013. The combined data basically means that more riders are taking shorter trips. It's not clear why, but the passenger miles traveled data generally appears much more volatile than the total riders data.

All-in-all its good to see ridership continue to grow across the board. Of course, that should be expected when there is economic expansion and job growth occurring. The 4.9% Cross County ridership growth is particularly encouraging.

Idiot driver. I rode Metrolink yesterday west from downtown, glad I wasn't on that one!

I think the stairs to a below-grade station would be a negative for passengers. And it'd cost an incredible amount.

quincunx wrote:I think the stairs to a below-grade station would be a negative for passengers.

I don't think that would be much of a problem as most stations (at least on the Missouri side) have stairs, so Metrolink riders are used to them.

^^I like the idea. And you could go under Sarah and Newstead while you were at it. But I think that would easily quintuple the cost of the new station and therefore be cost prohibitive.

The new station is expected to have average weekday ridership of 890, 780 of whom would be new riders (i.e. not cannibalized from Central West End or Grand stations). The Cortex station is anticipated to open by March 2017.

quincunx wrote:Idiot driver. I rode Metrolink yesterday west from downtown, glad I wasn't on that one!

Jesus that's stupid. I guess he'll get fined or something.

Although Metrolink's growth rate was 1.9% over the 12 months, it was .8% in the first two quarters of 2014. Here's how that ridership growth rate stacks up with some peer city light rail systems:

San Diego: 36.3%
Denver: 16.4%
Salt Lake City: 9.2%
Minneapolis: 3.6%
St. Louis: .8%
Portland: -.3%
Sacramento: -.6%
Pittsburgh: -1.7%
Cleveland: -4.6%
Baltimore: -11.4%
Buffalo: -25.2%

The 4th Qtr 2014 ridership report recently came out, and it's not pretty. Metrolink had the second largest decrease in the country. Ridership decreased 6.0% from Q4 2014 vs. Q4 2013. The only worse performer was Buffalo at -8.0%, which has been coping with a major construction project along its main downtown right-of-way.

This bucks a trend since Prop A'a passage of moderate but steady increases in ridership. The worst month for ridership was November, which had an 11% decrease. Considering the slow but steady job recovery in the St. Louis area, and the lack of any major Metrolink construction projects, I can't help but think that the November 24th Darren Wilson grand jury decision and the use of Metrolink as a means of protest by Ferguson activists may have had something to do with these significant decreases in ridership.

^ I wouldn't be surprised if that is a factor. But for some reason I was thinking the weather was also unusually bad around that time compared to the previous year too. I was thinking a couple of days of unusually early snowfall and ice which would have an impact.

I do worry if there is a Ferguson effect in terms of mass transit that will make it harder to expand a system.

imperialmog wrote:I do worry if there is a Ferguson effect in terms of mass transit that will make it harder to expand a system.

I think their are different political motivations at play when it comes to Ferguson and infrastructure investment, but yeah, it would certainly help the argument for expansion if ridership were increasing as opposed sliding precipitously.

What worries me is that I think Metrolink ridership is a decent economic indicator for St. Louis. It shows how much people are going to work, going out, and even visiting from out of town. For all of its shortcomings, Metrolink connects some of the key economic engines (employment centers, transportation centers, and entertainment/attractions) in the region. Lower ridership (absent cutbacks in service) is just not a good sign in terms of the economic health and activity within the core of the region.