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Over 5 Million People Use America's Rail and Other "Guideway" Systems Daily

Light Rail Progress • May 2003

US rail transit and other "fixed guideway" systems carry more than 11 million riders (rider-trips) each weekday. That's the conclusion of a Light Rail Progress analysis of data from the National Transit Database (NTDB) of the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) for 2001 – the latest complete year presently available.

As the table below indicates, average weekday ridership (unlinked trips) for all US rail transit and fixed-guideway systems (monorails, automated peoplemovers, etc.) totalled 11,447,400 in 2001. (For this tabulation, Jacksonville's automated monorail is counted as monorail, not automated guideway transit. Regional "commuter" rail is simply listed as regional rail.)

Weekday Ridership – US Fixed-Guideway Systems
(2001)

 

Rail Rapid Transit

Regional Rail

Light Rail

Monorail

Automated Guideway

Atlanta

265,100

       

Baltimore

48500

22,900

24,700

   

Boston

445100

132,800

230,800

   

Buffalo

   

22,600

   

Chicago

604,600

267,300

     

Cleveland

28,500

 

15,100

   

Detroit

   

100

 

6,100

Ft. Lauderdale

 

8,300

     

Jacksonville

     

2,600

 

Los Angeles

105,600

28,100

105,600

   

Memphis

   

6,400

   

Miami

46,300

     

16,200

New Orleans

   

14,100

   

New Jersey

 

220,400

25,500

   

New York

5,946,100

599,600

     

Philadelphia

329,500

108,500

84,100

   

Pittsburgh

   

24,700

   

Portland

   

77,400

   

Sacramento

   

29,400

   

Saint Louis

   

42,400

   

Salt Lake City

   

21,000

   

San Diego

   

84,500

   

San Francisco

353,400

33,300

164,200

   

San Jose

   

30,300

   

Washington

808,200

9,800

     

Seattle

 

1,900

 

5,800

 

TOTAL

8,980,900

1,432,900

1,002,900

8,400

22,300

The overwhelming bulk of this ridership – 99.7% – was carried on standard, two-rail systems (with about 9% of it on light rail systems). Monorail systems carried less than 0.1%, while the Detroit and Miami automated-guideway systems carried about 0.2%.

Boston rail passengersSince many of these rider-trips were round trips, and some involved transfers, the American Public Transportation Association estimates that actual, individual passengers (persons) constitute approximately 45% of unlinked trips. By using this factor, it can be calculated that approximately 5.2 million individual people, on average, actually rode US rail transit and fixed-guideway services on a typical weekday. That's a number of individuals approximately equal to the entire population in a major metropolitan area such as Dallas-Ft. Worth, Detroit, or Boston.

And it should be noted that that's only the average number of passengers for a single day. Local system surveys repeatedly show that the total number of people who use public transit (and, presumably, rail systems where they are available) intermittently – i.e., those who depend on these services to be there when they need them – is several times greater.



Rev. 2003/05/11




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