Posts tagged Ridership
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Metro ridership is in free fall. Why won’t the Metro board act?
WMATA recently released a performance report showing significant declines in year-over-year Metro ridership. But focusing on such a short time period actually understates how dire the situation Metro faces is. Keep reading…
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Metro Reasons: Amid trackwork, Metro says service has improved—but for fewer riders
After a brief recovery in July, Metrorail ridership dropped to new four-year lows in August and September 2018, according to a new quarterly report Metro published on Friday, November 9. There's some good news too: the report also indicates that the system is becoming more reliable. Keep reading…
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Metro’s record-breaking days provide a snapshot of local history
What do Jackson Browne, the Washington Football Team, and Barack Obama all have in common? They all played a part in setting a Metrorail single-day ridership record. Since opening in 1976, Metrorail has set a single-day record on at least 44 days (likely more), with more than half of those in the 1970s. Since 2000, it has set only four. Keep reading…
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WMATA actually did have a plan to recover ridership, and it’s everything advocates had been suggesting
This weekend, Faiz Siddiqui at the Washington Post reported that the WMATA Board had not seen, discussed, or devised a plan to reverse the dangerous drop in ridership on both the train and bus. Wednesday, he got just such a plan, a 26-page document which WMATA's planning and performance departments had created five months ago. Keep reading…
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Metrorail is no longer the second-busiest rapid transit system in the country
Transit ridership has been falling nationwide, but Washington's metro ridership has fallen significantly even compared to other systems. For a long time, Metrorail had long had the second-highest ridership of any of the country’s 13 heavy rail rapid-transit systems. Keep reading…
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Transit projects have to make impossible guesses on ridership predictions
New York's elevated railroads brought transit to farmland and sparked development of a city. China still does this. But in the United States, today, transit projects are expected to bring massive ridership instantly or risk being shut down or criticized. Like the Purple Line. Keep reading…
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All transit riders have a choice
Agencies and officials often sort transit riders into two groups: “captive” and “choice.” This is a false dichotomy that perpetuates inaccurate assumptions about who rides transit and what their motivations might be. Keep reading…
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Metro is getting rid of the 1000 and 4000 series railcars. That’s great… mostly.
Metro announced on Wednesday that all 1000 and 4000-series railcars will be gone by the end of the month. This might sound good because the 1000s and 4000s don’t work well, but it’s only happening because fewer trains will be running starting June 25th. Keep reading…
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DC Streetcar ridership is growing, and people are still riding the X2 and X9 buses, too
DC’s two-mile streetcar route overlaps two popular Metrobus lines, the X2 and X9, and when the streetcar started some wondered whether it would poach those lines’ riders. WMATA recently crunched the data, and it turns out overall transit ridership along the H Street/Benning Road corridor is up 15% since February. Keep reading…
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WMATA is up against a budget deficit. Today, it floated ideas for some very big, very difficult changes.
WMATA is again estimating that its operating costs will far outpace revenues. To close the gap, the agency is considering closing several stations during off-peak hours, decreasing how often trains run, and cutting some bus routes. Keep reading…