Grand River Transit

[Rainrider22]

Huh, so the LRT boardings dropped? It was 26k in 2020. Though that number can be wrong if monthly or corporate pass holders don't tap because as far as I'm aware you don't need to if you have one of those passes.

The record is reporting ION ridership prepandemic  was 17 k per day...  But I seem to recall reading numbers more in line with what you said.

[ZEBuilder]

Huh, so the LRT boardings dropped? It was 26k in 2020. Though that number can be wrong if monthly or corporate pass holders don't tap because as far as I'm aware you don't need to if you have one of those passes.

University students don't tap on the LRT either because they have a term pass, I've seen them tap on the bus but alot of them just don't tap on platforms, so there's definitely a significant portion that is missing for LRT ridership.

[ac3r]

Huh, so the LRT boardings dropped? It was 26k in 2020. Though that number can be wrong if monthly or corporate pass holders don't tap because as far as I'm aware you don't need to if you have one of those passes.

The record is reporting ION ridership prepandemic  was 17 k per day...  But I seem to recall reading numbers more in line with what you said.

Actually seems like it was 25k. From Keolis (this might load up in French for some reason, though we should all know that anyway :'P...): https://www.keolis.ca/en/node/234

Huh, so the LRT boardings dropped? It was 26k in 2020. Though that number can be wrong if monthly or corporate pass holders don't tap because as far as I'm aware you don't need to if you have one of those passes.

University students don't tap on the LRT either because they have a term pass, I've seen them tap on the bus but alot of them just don't tap on platforms, so there's definitely a significant portion that is missing for LRT ridership.

Oh yeah, students don't need to either. Though I remember not tapping once because I convinced my company to give me a corporate pass and when the fare Nazis got on they thought I was stealing a ride since I didn't tap and had to convince them I wasn't. I made it a habit to do so now in order to help with data.

[taylortbb]

 LThough that number can be wrong if monthly or corporate pass holders don't tap because as far as I'm aware you don't need to if you have one of those passes.

I believe they use automated passenger counters for the boarding data. Because of people not tapping, but also because of bus drivers over using the free buttons (e.g. hitting the "child" button a dozen times even though only 5 boarded).

Actually seems like it was 25k. From Keolis (this might load up in French for some reason, though we should all know that anyway :'P...): https://www.keolis.ca/en/node/234

25,000 was the pre-opening ridership forecast, so I'm suspicious they just used that. Especially for a Nov 2020 post, ridership definitely wasn't that high then.

I suspect this is a record high for ION boardings.

[tomh009]

Pre-pandemic, peak monthly LRT ridership was 410K in November 2019, which equates to roughly 14K boardings per day.

See the Power BI dashboard here:
https://www.grt.ca/en/about-grt/performa...sures.aspx

   

[taylortbb]

Pre-pandemic, peak monthly LRT ridership was 410K in November 2019, which equates to roughly 14K boardings per day.

Not directly comparable though, as the 20k/day stat is for non-holiday weekdays only.

[tomh009]

Pre-pandemic, peak monthly LRT ridership was 410K in November 2019, which equates to roughly 14K boardings per day.

Not directly comparable though, as the 20k/day stat is for non-holiday weekdays only.

Where did you see that? I didn't see it in the GRT press release, which only said 20,000 daily LRT boardings in the first week of September. Are you saying that it was 20,000/day for the four non-holiday weekdays only, and they didn't count the boardings on the long weekend at all?

[taylortbb]

Not directly comparable though, as the 20k/day stat is for non-holiday weekdays only.

Where did you see that? I didn't see it in the GRT press release, which only said 20,000 daily LRT boardings in the first week of September. Are you saying that it was 20,000/day for the four non-holiday weekdays only, and they didn't count the boardings on the long weekend at all?

I saw the announcement on their Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/p/CxLrkWcgBSU/ . That post makes it clear the 150k/day was weekday, but you're right the press release doesn't. Given the press release doesn't specify days I'm inclined to believe the Instagram post.

I think the 25k/day ION ridership target was always weekday though.

[Bytor]

The record is reporting ION ridership prepandemic  was 17 k per day...  But I seem to recall reading numbers more in line with what you said.

Actually seems like it was 25k. From Keolis (this might load up in French for some reason, though we should all know that anyway :'P...): https://www.keolis.ca/en/node/234

It was never that in November 2020. Fall 2020 was 7k to 10k weekday averages.

University students don't tap on the LRT either because they have a term pass, I've seen them tap on the bus but alot of them just don't tap on platforms, so there's definitely a significant portion that is missing for LRT ridership.

Oh yeah, students don't need to either. Though I remember not tapping once because I convinced my company to give me a corporate pass and when the fare Nazis got on they thought I was stealing a ride since I didn't tap and had to convince them I wasn't. I made it a habit to do so now in order to help with data.

Boardings are not calculated in from fare card taps. All busses and trams use ultrasonic people counters mounted above the doors.

[Bytor]

Pre-pandemic, peak monthly LRT ridership was 410K in November 2019, which equates to roughly 14K boardings per day.

See the Power BI dashboard here:
https://www.grt.ca/en/about-grt/performa...sures.aspx

That's the average daily boardings over a month if you don't differentiate between week days, Saturdays, and Sundays/holidays.

Thanks to past email conversations with Blair Allen, a good rule of thumb is to count Saturdays as 60-75% of a weekday and Sundays and holidays as 40-50% of a weekday.

For ease of calculation in a spreadsheet where I can use functions to get the number of  weekdays, Saturdays, and Sundays but not holidays, I do Nᵥᵥ*1 + Nₛ*2/3 + Nₕ/2 and then subtract 2/3 for a holiday and I am no more than +/- 0.5 days off.

In Google Sheets that becomes

=NETWORKDAYS($D2,$E2)+NETWORKDAYS.INTL($D2,$E2, "1111101")*(2/3)+NETWORKDAYS.INTL($D2,$E2, "1111110")*0.5-2/3

For November 2019 that's 25.667 days and 530,000 / 25.667 = ~20,649 weekday riders. The +/-0.5 day error would make that a range of 20,254 to 21,059.

I keep track of the numbers (and have been for several years).

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...sjEnTmPhGY

LRT boardings bottomed out in January 2021, similarly recovering in fits and starts. There obviously wasn't a full year of LRT data before the pandemic, but so far I have no reason to believe that it will not follow the broadly U-shaped pattern of GRT with highs in January & November and a low in August.

Bus boardings bottomed out in April 2020 and have recovered in fits and starts, and appear to have resumed the "traditional" yearly curve in August 2022.

As of July, we are at +8.82% relative to the same point in 2019. GRT's stats update are close to 3 months behind, as of late being don at the end of the third full week in the month for M-2.

[Chris]

Just don't. I hate this.

https://kitchener.citynews.ca/2023/10/05...vertising/

Regional staff recommending more advertising on GRT

[ac3r]

At least they agreed (so far, anyway) to not have adverts on the LRT. I'd hate to not be able to see out the windows.

Edit: That's what I get for not reading the article first haha.

[danbrotherston]

Yeah, that's incredibly disappointing.

Like most people (or at least most North Americans) regional staff (and probably council) don't even comprehend that advertisements have a cost.

It's interesting how for something people are willing to pay so much money for (well, not really that much compared with the GRT budget, but that's a separate issue) that people don't realise that it is actually impactful.

Oh well.

I will gloat a bit more...the Netherlands has very VERY little public advertising. Basically none on transit vehicles, few to no billboards...occasional advertisements on major roads but relatively minimal.

[dtkvictim]

Can we at least get Hello Kitty and Evangelion wraps as well?

[bravado]

Since “dignity” and “respect” aren’t objective things to measure in the equation, of course staff recommended that abomination of a plan.