Six months have passed, so it’s time for another LACMTA rail ridership update. As a reminder, bus ridership for the Westside and San Fernando Valley has been broken out into separate posts.
First, the raw data. Highlighted cells represent the top 10 months for that line (since January 2009).
Recent trends have continued, with the Blue, Green, and Red/Purple Lines continuing to decline. On the bright side, the Gold Line is at all-time highs for ridership on weekdays and weekends, setting records at the end of 2015. The Expo Line also had two top-10 months since July; assuming this holds the 12-month rolling average will start to rise soon. The Gold Line will probably be impacted in February by construction-related shutdown, but all of these data points will soon be irrelevant as both lines will have extensions come on line.
Here’s the rolling 12-month average of weekday ridership:
As noted previously, some of the drop in the Blue and Red/Purple Lines may be due to ongoing construction that has increased late-night headways and shut down portions of the Blue Line at times.
Saturday and Sunday trends largely reflect the weekdays.
Here’s the Saturday and Sunday rolling 12-month averages.
And lastly, here’s the update for the rolling 12-month average of boardings per mile:
The Expo Line has very nearly passed the Blue Line for boardings per mile, but not for the reasons we’d hope! It seems likely that the Expo Line will race past the Blue Line once Expo 2 opens to be the most productive light rail line.
Our next update will be in July 2016, so hold on to your hats for two LRT extensions!
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As far as the Red/Purple Line, they have had late night maintenance literally for years with no end in sight. I wonder if it will ever end. It definately is a detriment to using the subway.
Why do you say: “It seems likely that the Expo Line will race past the Blue Line once Expo 2 opens to be the most productive light rail line”? When Expo Phase 2 opens it will be 6.6 miles, (or 77%) longer than it is now. That means that total ridership on Expo will have to increase by 77%, to almost 54,000 daily riders, just to get back to the current productivity value. I haven’t seen any ridership estimates that forecast that much ridership on Expo for several years after the extension opens.
Metro has been steadily cutting service over the last few years. A more accurate measure would be boardings per operating hour, or better, boardings per revenue hour. These are probably steady or increasing.
RSH has been steady for a few years now – check the budget numbers. Revenue service miles are probably dropping, commensurate with the increase in traffic and the previous CEO’s emphasis on higher quality operations – which the current CEO is removing through the “risk allocation matrix”.