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MTA 2013 Ridership Statistics


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But the question is, why should we lower express bus ride costs when we're not lowering them for local riders? Are express bus riders now more important than local bus riders, who are generally poorer? It's not as if express bus service costs less than local bus service on a per-rider basis (because it isn't, not by a long shot).

 

Of course lowering the fare is going to attract more riders. Making the express bus free would also do that, but just because we can increase ridership by cutting a single set of fares doesn't mean we should.

This argument can actually sometimes be toxic to ridership and even operating costs if overused. Sometimes it works like where express bus fares are not much higher and have little competition but in other instances this thinking is very detrimental to ridership so much so that it isn't worth it.

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This argument can actually sometimes be toxic to ridership and even operating costs if overused. Sometimes it works like where express bus fares are not much higher and have little competition but in other instances this thinking is very detrimental to ridership so much so that it isn't worth it.

 

Express buses are a premium service. You want the premium service, you pay the premium fare. Simple as that. Contrary to your opinion, high ridership is not the overwhelming objective of a transit agency. Express bus service is very much a premium coverage service for those without subway options, since the commuter rails don't really make inner-city stops very frequently.

 

The express bus is expensive? New York City is expensive. You lower the fare for one group of people, you lower it for all.

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I used to be obsessed with fast buses till I realized fast buses are sometimes redundant to fast trains.

Two of the main problems with your obsession (took you long enough to admit this btw) with putting buses on highways, was the fact that you were suggesting current local routes run on our (already clogged) highways.....

 

Fact of the matter is, None of your "fast bus" ideas were practical.... You were simply suggesting plugging current local routes onto highways, solely based on the notion that traveling on a highway is faster than traveling on local roads... Which is lazy & further showed that you didn't consider the riders of the routes with which you were making such suggestions for, at all.....

 

Now granted, I do think this city should have interborough super limited local routes (or whatever you wanna call them), instead of just local buses that travel within its respective borough (or on a smaller scale in our system, interborough local routes) & express buses that (for the most part) transports patrons that live in "edge" communities (+ the borough of SI) to/from manhattan.... 

 

I'll give you some examples of what I'm getting at (instead of you diverting local routes onto highways, new routes can benefit people traveling between):

* Park slope - Midtown Manhattan (instead of tryna force these riders onto already crowded B103's, full knowing they're gonna have to take the subway to leave the borough anyway)

* Astoria - Midtown Manhattan (instead of having kept the QM22 [which had piss-poor service to begin with] around for as long as they did)

* UES/Yorkville - Lower Manhattan (instead of the x90, which was an intraborough express bus; meaning express bus fares...)

* Fordham - Harlem (instead of taking the MNRR, or putting up w/ the Bx12 to *whatever* subway line)

 

You can bring up redundancy to any bus route paralleling a subway/RR line.... However, this does not make the bus any less important a mode of travel.... This type of thinking (of trying to persuade everyone into taking rapid transit within the boroughs) has to stop.... How many more people can we really afford to cram onto our subways.... It's slowly getting to the point where off-peak travel on some lines resemble rush hour travel; just got through reading an article about that in amNY earlier this week.....

 

I hate to make this type of an argument, but really, we're becoming too populous with transients, out-of-town yuppies, & tourists (that are eventually making the jump to move here from their native country, after a couple visits here)... This is how word gets around about certain neighborhoods; neighborhoods like Williamsburg, Bushwick, & Carroll Gardens south (I meant Red Hook... don't laugh, because it's true) didn't become "up & coming" overnight.... Although I don't care much for ferries, VG8 does have a bit of a point - The non-natives are being force fed subways because us natives have been force fed subways by the MTA for god knows how long, and I honestly believe that you can get these non natives into taking other modes of transportation....

 

I can go on with this, but I'll stop here for now.... hopefully you get the point.

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Two of the main problems with your obsession (took you long enough to admit this btw) with putting buses on highways, was the fact that you were suggesting current local routes run on our (already clogged) highways.....

 

Fact of the matter is, None of your "fast bus" ideas were practical.... You were simply suggesting plugging current local routes onto highways, solely based on the notion that traveling on a highway is faster than traveling on local roads... Which is lazy & further showed that you didn't consider the riders of the routes with which you were making such suggestions for, at all.....

 

Now granted, I do think this city should have interborough super limited local routes (or whatever you wanna call them), instead of just local buses that travel within its respective borough (or on a smaller scale in our system, interborough local routes) & express buses that (for the most part) transports patrons that live in "edge" communities (+ the borough of SI) to/from manhattan.... 

 

I'll give you some examples of what I'm getting at (instead of you diverting local routes onto highways, new routes can benefit people traveling between):

* Park slope - Midtown Manhattan (instead of tryna force these riders onto already crowded B103's, full knowing they're gonna have to take the subway to leave the borough anyway)

* Astoria - Midtown Manhattan (instead of having kept the QM22 [which had piss-poor service to begin with] around for as long as they did)

* UES/Yorkville - Lower Manhattan (instead of the x90, which was an intraborough express bus; meaning express bus fares...)

* Fordham - Harlem (instead of taking the MNRR, or putting up w/ the Bx12 to *whatever* subway line)

 

You can bring up redundancy to any bus route paralleling a subway/RR line.... However, this does not make the bus any less important a mode of travel.... This type of thinking (of trying to persuade everyone into taking rapid transit within the boroughs) has to stop.... How many more people can we really afford to cram onto our subways.... It's slowly getting to the point where off-peak travel on some lines resemble rush hour travel; just got through reading an article about that in amNY earlier this week.....

 

I hate to make this type of an argument, but really, we're becoming too populous with transients, out-of-town yuppies, & tourists (that are eventually making the jump to move here from their native country, after a couple visits here)... This is how word gets around about certain neighborhoods; neighborhoods like Williamsburg, Bushwick, & Carroll Gardens south (I meant Red Hook... don't laugh, because it's true) didn't become "up & coming" overnight.... Although I don't care much for ferries, VG8 does have a bit of a point - The non-natives are being force fed subways because us natives have been force fed subways by the MTA for god knows how long, and I honestly believe that you can get these non natives into taking other modes of transportation....

 

I can go on with this, but I'll stop here for now.... hopefully you get the point.

Most of the BQE traffic is toll shoppers trying to avoid tolls which makes damand seem higher.  Yorkville to lower Manhattan should have been merged with a bxm route. Fordham to Harlem has bx15 LTD Which is multipurpose. Most from Fordham itself use the (4) or metro north allowing bronx patrons space on LTD buses. Astoria to midtown has the (N) & (Q) which aren't frequent enough. The people of NYC have a subway complex not just the MTA.  However in Astoria I would focus on improving connecting local buses like Q104,66,19 and the NW queens bus network before creating a copy-cat busthat is redundant to the subway. Tried the Q104 lately it's so bad people just walk rather than wait for it which is just sad. Q101 ain't much better. Sometimes in Astoria I wonder if I am taking a suburban bus system yes it's that bad.

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Two of the main problems with your obsession (took you long enough to admit this btw) with putting buses on highways, was the fact that you were suggesting current local routes run on our (already clogged) highways.....

 

Fact of the matter is, None of your "fast bus" ideas were practical.... You were simply suggesting plugging current local routes onto highways, solely based on the notion that traveling on a highway is faster than traveling on local roads... Which is lazy & further showed that you didn't consider the riders of the routes with which you were making such suggestions for, at all.....

 

Now granted, I do think this city should have interborough super limited local routes (or whatever you wanna call them), instead of just local buses that travel within its respective borough (or on a smaller scale in our system, interborough local routes) & express buses that (for the most part) transports patrons that live in "edge" communities (+ the borough of SI) to/from manhattan.... 

 

I'll give you some examples of what I'm getting at (instead of you diverting local routes onto highways, new routes can benefit people traveling between):

* Park slope - Midtown Manhattan (instead of tryna force these riders onto already crowded B103's, full knowing they're gonna have to take the subway to leave the borough anyway)

* Astoria - Midtown Manhattan (instead of having kept the QM22 [which had piss-poor service to begin with] around for as long as they did)

* UES/Yorkville - Lower Manhattan (instead of the x90, which was an intraborough express bus; meaning express bus fares...)

* Fordham - Harlem (instead of taking the MNRR, or putting up w/ the Bx12 to *whatever* subway line)

 

 

Doesn't Bx15 already cover the bolded option? or would a route taking on a different orientation be what you're trying to get at?

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Doesn't Bx15 already cover the bolded option? or would a route taking on a different orientation be what you're trying to get at?

Not sure what you mean by "different orientation" here, but what I'm thinking of, would have nothing to do w/ the Bx15....

Matter fact, I wouldn't even have it utilizing 3rd av.....

 

He means a super limited route, without making the thousands of stops along the way.

You get the idea....

 

Something that would take on a similar routing such as this: [See Map Here]

(current manhattan bound Bx15 in red, for visual/comparative purposes)

 

The Bx15 is good for serving 3rd av locally, as well as bringing folks locally to/from Harlem... The aim with what I'm thinking about, is of a more "regional" sense; although I wouldn't make it a direct point-to-point route exactly...

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Not sure what you mean by "different orientation" here, but what I'm thinking of, would have nothing to do w/ the Bx15....

Matter fact, I wouldn't even have it utilizing 3rd av.....

 

You get the idea....

 

Something that would take on a similar routing such as this: [See Map Here]

(current manhattan bound Bx15 in red, for visual/comparative purposes)

 

The Bx15 is good for serving 3rd av locally, as well as bringing folks locally to/from Harlem... The aim with what I'm thinking about, is of a more "regional" sense; although I wouldn't make it a direct point-to-point route exactly...

 

I personally never understood why they would keep the Harlem leg on the LTD Bx15, rather than give it to the Bx41 SBS.

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I personally never understood why they would keep the Harlem leg on the LTD Bx15, rather than give it to the Bx41 SBS.

To me, this basically inquires which is more important to more bronx riders, 3rd or webster......

 

IMO, SBS along 125th st is a lost cause..... Knowing the MTA though, you may get your wish in the distant future....

(although I don't see how they'd effectively pull off a 125th & webster SBS route)

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The local bus fare is not that bad. $2.50 is a fair price compared to the express which is $6. If I had a choice I would rider ride the local/LTD to the train station and go to the city like that, then having to spend $12 a day. People just don't have that. That's why routes like the QM21 and QM18 are not going to improve because of the people who live in the area they operate in. I hope this is clearer.

 

How can you discuss what a fair price is without bringing up cost?

 

Here are some numbers (from 2010, but they give an idea of the general trends):

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aha-LfXMlWNBdFpZajNOUnNmRkpTSGl2UjRjS2x4eEE&hl=en#gid=0

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aha-LfXMlWNBdHd4QkhLRF92cURWNWdSbzNfSjJwWWc&hl=en#gid=1

 

IMO, SBS along 125th st is a lost cause..... 

 

The M60 is coming soon.

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What does cost per rider mean? I thought when you pay $2.50 on the bus that what it was. Why did Q79 have such high cost per passenger and it had low ridership.

Cost-per-rider is how much it actually costs the (MTA) for each rider that rides the bus, subway etc.  All fares are subsidized, some more than others through taxes, etc.

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What does cost per rider mean? I thought when you pay $2.50 on the bus that what it was.

 

Why did Q79 have such high cost per passenger and it had low ridership.

- VG8 briefly answered your first question.... I'll expound on it a little more.

The difference between the fare per rider & the cost per rider is that the former is a set figure ($2.50/local route, $6.00/express route), and the latter is variable (meaning, a differing figure) per route.... Because every route in the system doesn't travel the same amount of mileage, garner the same amounts of riders, & hell, doesn't all use the same fleet.....

 

Simplifying the MTA's definition/inclusion of cost per rider, Revenue mileage (in other words, a route's distance from end to end), the # of trips the route has, the amount of riders a route gets, etc., all factors in to cost per rider.... The closer a route's cost per rider is to the current fare, the better this figure is - It's even better if a route's cost per rider is lower than the current fare (meaning, a great farebox recovery ratio)....

 

- With that said, the above answers your 2nd question; regarding the Q79....

Even though the Q79 was a relatively short route, its ridership for as many trips it had, was low - Translating to a high cost per rider....

Looking at it another way, It costed the MTA $8.08 per rider, even though the fare was 2.25 right before they cut it! Poor farebox recovery ratio (View this as, the MTA needed more than 3 riders to cover the costs for this route per rider @ $2.25... That's not a good thing for the MTA at all, being that we riders pay the highest costs at the farebox in the nation)......

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Most of the BQE traffic is toll shoppers trying to avoid tolls which makes damand seem higher.  Yorkville to lower Manhattan should have been merged with a bxm route. Fordham to Harlem has bx15 LTD Which is multipurpose. Most from Fordham itself use the (4) or metro north allowing bronx patrons space on LTD buses. Astoria to midtown has the (N) & (Q) which aren't frequent enough. The people of NYC have a subway complex not just the MTA.  However in Astoria I would focus on improving connecting local buses like Q104,66,19 and the NW queens bus network before creating a copy-cat bus that is redundant to the subway. Tried the Q104 lately it's so bad people just walk rather than wait for it which is just sad. Q101 ain't much better. Sometimes in Astoria I wonder if I am taking a suburban bus system yes it's that bad.

Didn't even see this post yesterday....

 

- Merging the x90 with the BxM18 (which is the only BxM route that even goes to lower manhattan, like the x90 did) would've made no sense... That's an express version of a superroute, and it would not have benefitted either Yorkville patrons or Riverdale patrons..... That would have defeated the purpose of an express bus.....

 

- From Fordham to Harlem? Not even close... Most those riders take the (D) to avoid a longer walk from Jerome (this includes the xfer at yankee stadium from the (4) to the (D) if riders are emanating from the east side of Harlem)....

The Harlem folks that take (4)'s, tend to utilize those stops well south of Fordham more....

Providing for space on the Bx15 LTD's? The (4) & the MNRR does no such thing for the Bx15.... Those are 2 very separate issues.... You make it sound like there are masses that even want to take the Bx15 from Fordham to Harlem.... The masses that take the Bx15 out of Fordham are the intra-Bronx riders, and rightfully so....

 

- There is no chicken & egg situation here.... On a system-wide/city-wide scale, The MTA, in general, does a piss poor job at making bus service conducive to riders (advertising, included)..... The people on NYC tend to have an "express-a-holic" complex, not necessarily a subway complex....Case in point, if the express bus fare was the same/similar to the base fare, ridership on express buses would be through the roof.....

 

- Already spoke on the Bx15 & it not having anything to do with what I was getting at....

 

- Improving connectivity b/w the Q104, Q66, Q19 to what exactly? The N/Q?

 

It's not a connectivity issue with the NW Queens buses.... The fact of the matter is, you have as many of those folks in Astoria (of the ones that take buses, I mean) gunning for 69's & 100's to QBP for the subway...

You allude to it yourself, the Q104 comes few & far between (or as you put it, people are walking rather than waiting for it).... People from Astoria don't use the Q19 to get to Astoria subway (because it serves the least dense part of the neighborhood!), that's those people coming from Flushing (off some other bus, for the most part) & within E. Elmhurst - and they've done so at an increased rate)..... The Q66 doesn't even go to Astoria; don't know why you even brought that route up......

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Not sure what you mean by "different orientation" here, but what I'm thinking of, would have nothing to do w/ the Bx15....

Matter fact, I wouldn't even have it utilizing 3rd av.....

 

You get the idea....

 

Something that would take on a similar routing such as this: [See Map Here]

(current manhattan bound Bx15 in red, for visual/comparative purposes)

 

The Bx15 is good for serving 3rd av locally, as well as bringing folks locally to/from Harlem... The aim with what I'm thinking about, is of a more "regional" sense; although I wouldn't make it a direct point-to-point route exactly...

Ok that's one way to avoid duplication. Sort of.

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Yeah I know I been on here since 2010 but most of the threads I created didn't last that long.

 

So about Long Island bus did the MTA gather up ridership statistics for LI Bus just like they did for the MTA and NYCT bus? Does NICE do it because I was always curious of how the ridership is in Nassau County.

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Yeah I know I been on here since 2010 but most of the threads I created didn't last that long.

 

So about Long Island bus did the MTA gather up ridership statistics for LI Bus just like they did for the MTA and NYCT bus? Does NICE do it because I was always curious of how the ridership is in Nassau County.

 

LI Bus had statistics on the website, but those disappeared when NICE took over. In any case, is anyone else getting a 404 Error when trying to reach the ridership statistics now?

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LI Bus had statistics on the website, but those disappeared when NICE took over. In any case, is anyone else getting a 404 Error when trying to reach the ridership statistics now?

The MTA's website right well I wonder if it will show up if I use the internet archive time machine.

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Ok that's one way to avoid duplication. Sort of.

....Except my intention wasn't to avoid duplication... At all.

 

If you want to see real high cost-per-passenger examples, look at the 2011 Long Island Bus statistics. On weekdays, the N14 cost $15.02 per passenger and on Saturdays, the N81 cost $25.75 per passenger. That's more than ten times the $2.50 fare.

Yep, well aware that the average LIB/NICE route has a higher cost per passenger than the average MTA route....

Smh Lol @ the N81; For the avg. express bus route, is lower than that...

 

I'd like to know how much it costed LIB to operate the old N93 for that 1 SOB that rode it :lol:

 

....In any case, is anyone else getting a 404 Error when trying to reach the ridership statistics now?

Yeah, for the past like, week now.....

 

The MTA's website right well I wonder if it will show up if I use the internet archive time machine.

Already tried that.... The MTA specific statistics page wasn't archived in 2014 as of yet.

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....Except my intention wasn't to avoid duplication... At all.

 

Yep, well aware that the average LIB/NICE route has a higher cost per passenger than the average MTA route....

Smh Lol @ the N81; For the avg. express bus route, is lower than that...

 

I'd like to know how much it costed LIB to operate the old N93 for that 1 SOB that rode it :lol:

 

Yeah, for the past like, week now.....

 

Already tried that.... The MTA specific statistics page wasn't archived in 2014 as of yet.

 

This probably means we're going to get a brand new MTA Website!TM.

 

Granted, if you're looking for something that isn't a normal rider would look for, the website looks like absolute crap, but you'd think they'd make a new one separately while the old one is still up and running.

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....Except my intention wasn't to avoid duplication... At all.

 

 

Yep, well aware that the average LIB/NICE route has a higher cost per passenger than the average MTA route....

Smh Lol @ the N81; For the avg. express bus route, is lower than that...

 

I'd like to know how much it costed LIB to operate the old N93 for that 1 SOB that rode it :lol:

 

 

Yeah, for the past like, week now.....

 

 

Already tried that.... The MTA specific statistics page wasn't archived in 2014 as of yet.

Well I actually meant the page that has the LI Bus ridership Statistics. I don't know the link to it in order to search it up in the archives.

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....Except my intention wasn't to avoid duplication... At all.

 

Yep, well aware that the average LIB/NICE route has a higher cost per passenger than the average MTA route....

Smh Lol @ the N81; For the avg. express bus route, is lower than that...

 

I'd like to know how much it costed LIB to operate the old N93 for that 1 SOB that rode it :lol:

 

Lol. It was really high. Cost about 4-9 times more than the n14 at the time, that's for sure.

 

 

Just in case it was a rhetorical question, I'll just leave the answer here: the Weekday Cost was around $130, and on Saturday, it costed around $69.

 

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