Yesterday public meetings were held on the proposed Bus Rapid Transit project and the County Executive contrasted its acceptance with that of the North Shore Connector noting “everybody hated the North Shore Connector until it was built, but now it is used a lot…they seem to love [the BRT] from the beginning”. He then noted that when the BRT gets built, “there’s going to be a lot more riders”.
Well how many? The Port Authority does not separate out statistics for ridership on the Connector, so unless there is in-house information on ridership it is hard to know where the Executive is drawing his data, or how many are riding for free between the Golden Triangle or the North Shore stations and what that has done for any boost. The Authority until 2010 provided modal data (bus, light rail, incline, ACCESS) in its budgets, but then its stopped. In those years and year since the best source of information is the National Transit Database, and that does not separate out Connector ridership. Our Briefs have measured total light rail ridership and the last available year from the NTD was 2014, when light rail ridership stood at 7.9 million unlinked trips, about 14% higher than 2011 pre-Connector ridership.
And sure there will be more riders on the BRT (no word on if those rides will also be free, and with the mention of off-board ticketing it seems unlikely), but the effect has to be measured on net since it will be replacing existing bus routes. In 2014, also from NTD, PAT bus unlinked trips totaled 53.4 million. What degree of net impact does the Executive foresee? The highest year of bus ridership in the last decade was 2007 with 60.3 million trips.
Interestingly the transit authority that serves Cleveland and Cuyahoga County in its comprehensive annual financial report has, since 2012, separated out operating statistics for its BRT project (in 2013 a delegation from Pittsburgh and Allegheny County toured the Healthline BRT) and the authority provides data for bus, heavy rail, light rail, demand response, and BRT. Since 2012, BRT ridership has climbed from 4.6 million to 4.8 million to 5.0 million in 2014, a 10% increase on that mode). The remainder of the modes grew 1.3%.
In 2011, prior to when BRT stats were separated, the authority’s bus ridership was 37.1 million, then it fell to 33.8 million, increased to 34.3 million, and then to 34.4 million. A 2012 “before and after” study on the Healthline noted it “…carries 14,300 trips on the average weekday compared to 8,900 weekday trips on the Route 6 that it replaced”. It is not hard to envision similar results for a BRT in Pittsburgh, but what will it do for overall ridership on all modes?
Taking into consideration the modes operated by PAT, and looking at the year before the opening of the Connector to the last NTD reported year (2014) total ridership has been 63.8 million, 65.8 million, 63.5 million, and 63.6 million.
