Today the Antiplanner features a guest post from faithful ally Tom Rubin.
The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) publishes transit ridership data every quarter. According to APTA’s web site, “First quarter data are available about July 15 each year; second quarter about October 15; third quarter about January 15; and fourth quarter about April 20.”
July 15 is 106 days after the end of the first quarter. Maybe I’m just growing older, but I don’t recall it taking that long in the past to compile the data; after all, what is involved is having a lot of transit agencies fill out forms with three months of data for each of the modes they operate and get that to APTA. There are always some slowpokes, but that seems a bit much. In fact, I was looking at this page not all that many weeks ago and I could have sworn it said the delay was about two-and-one-half-months, not three-and-one-half.
So, falling back on my auditor training, I decided to search out other factoids that could cast some light on this.
The APTA press release announcing the record transit ridership for calendar year 2008 is dated March 9. These numbers, of course, are taken from the quarterly report database, which means the fourth quarter 2008 report has to be completed before they can do the 2008 calendar year report. March 9 is 68 days after the end of the quarter.
The press release for the third quarter 2008 results is dated December 8, or 69 days after the end of the quarter. The second-quarter press release is dated September 9, or 71 days after the end of the quarter, while the first-quarter release is dated June 2, or 63 days after the end of the quarter.
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So, for the last four press releases on quarterly ridership data, the range is from 63 to 71 days after the end of the quarter, with an average of 67.75, for those of you who are really into meaningless precise statistics.
Here’s the thing — all the recent quarterly reports have shown what is, for the transit industry, very large increases in ridership. The fourth quarter ridership increase was a lot smaller than the previous quarters, so the press release focused on the annual comparison, with a big annual increase to a new American record for transit usage (for those of you who are more interested in absolute numbers, as opposed to, for example, per-capita usage).
There are more than a few of us who have been looking at recent economic trends, such as the price of fuel compared to six months and a year ago, the number of people who are no longer employed and, therefore, are no longer making home-to-work trips (there is an old saying about transit passengers: “last hired, first fired”), and have concluded that there is a good chance that first quarter 2009 national ridership will be down from the 2008 comparables. We know, for example, that January and February ridership on New York City transit is down by about 4 percent from 2008.
I seem to recall something or other going on about hearings for the successor to SAFETEA-LU — which, I believe, will be known as “SAFETEA-LULU” — something about June, if I recall.
So, if APTA could match last year’s production, and have the First Quarter ridership numbers available and in a press release by June 2nd, it would be on the table for those hearings.
It occurs to me that, if I was APTA President Bill Millar and I was going up to the Hill to testify about how much money was needed for transit, I would want to start with the story of how much transit usage was up, not how it was going down. So could it be that APTA is delaying publication of the data so it doesn’t have to admit that ridership is down?
In the past, APTA has had an extraordinary ability to argue that, no matter what the ridership, transit needs more government money. But this time, perhaps, APTA wants to trumpet a transit success rather than a failure.
Tom,
I haven’t gotten around to getting my spreadheet on Houston Metro’s ridership statistics fully up to date, but I do know that we’ve had falling ridership since March 2008. The fall in ridership was exacerbated by Metro deciding to hike fares in November 2008 when they really didn’t need to. Unlike most areas of the country, we’ve weathered the current economic predicaments pretty well down here, as indicated that our transit agency received a record $520 million in sales tax monies in 2008.
The real reason our agency down here raised fares was because the agency needs every dollar it can get its hands on in order to build light rail lines that will cost about $150 million per mile, twice as much as the public was told it would cost only one month before.
Ah great, TAR more BS!
Neal Meyer said: The real reason our agency down here raised fares was because the agency needs every dollar it can get its hands on in order to build light rail lines that will cost about $150 million per mile, twice as much as the public was told it would cost only one month before.
THWM: Transit activists in Houston have complained about the city adding on extra stuff and jacking up the price tag to this insane amount, the cost of track is more like $1.5 million per mile.