Secondly to repeat myself, ridership numbers are only one metric from which to gauge success of a line.

This is not a Link light rail problem. This is not a Sound Transit problem.

How hard is it to understand that as ridership grows, operators and fare checkers become a tiny fraction of ridership. Luggage counts can be corrected using better algorithms to analyze sensor data, to say it can’t be done is pure BS. I know people whose research is in improving image detection techniques for counting pedestrians and cars.

Many, if not most, transit systems also count fares, and fare revenues collected. When are we going to get some “fares paid”, and “fare revenues collected” figures for Link light rail? Those would be more meaningful numbers. Luggage, operators, and fare checkers don’t pay fares, so a count of fares paid would be far more accurate.

All transit systems using APC will suffer these issues. No APC system is 100 percent accurate. Even manual counts have errors. The only reason you’re making a big deal out of this is to claim that ST’s ridership figures are inflated. As ridership increases your concern will solve itself as the claimed false boardings (if they even exist) become smaller and smaller as a proportion of total boardings.

The manual counter said they had not been able to correct the APC’s to avoid false counts.

I didn’t say that. I said at the end it doesn’t have to.

Where did you get 500 trips? Over an 18 hour service day that’s 13 trips/hour/direction on average which is much higher than the peak frequency of Link (8 tphpd). I’m basing my trips off what David Seater posted above (124 trains/direction) which 25% is 62 inspected trips per day. Two checkers makes 122 and three checkers makes 186 counts, per day. That’s still around or less than 1% the total daily boardings and will become less significant over time.

Who knows how many large bags get counted as “boardings”?

Since you said the manual counter mentioned that, then they would have corrected the sensitivity of the APCs to reduce false counts. No big deal.

No. It is only one metric of success, highly volatile, and it is waaayyy to early to have any sort of perspective.

Are ridership numbers something that the public at large PERCEIVES as being important?

Yes.

I think this raises a very good point: what difference does it make what Link ridership is? This site keeps publishing ridership statistics. If ridership doesn’t matter, then why even have a thread about ridership?

So, I would ask those of you engaging me on this thread: are ridership numbers important, and if so why? If not, why not?

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At SeaTac, drivers board trains at the same time, through the same doors, as passengers.

If fare checkers check 1/4 of train cars, that is 125 cars per day (out of 500 car trips). Three checkers times 125 cars equals 375 fare checkers counted as “boardings.”

Who knows how many large bags get counted as “boardings”? If there are an average of 5 large bags per car, that would be a potential 2,500 false boardings. If the automatic counters counted just 1/5 of all large bags as “boardings”, that would add up to 500 false boardings per day from luggage.

Way to go, you “old folk”, your lasting legacy will go down in the history books. Right down there with seceding from the union.

ST rail services will be higher than average in general for two reasons:

1) Offboard payment means the train leaves without you – there’s an incentive to make your payment quick.

2) No transfers are issued – you’re likely to want to transfer to/from a bus.