JTA Transit Ridership Numbers

[CS Foltz]

To be sure, JTA wants as little input from riders as possible.  They are holding two meetings, 11 a.m.â€"1 p.m. and 4â€"5:30 p.m, right when people who take the damned things are at work. 

Yes, let's cut service to ensure the people who have no additional transportation can lose their jobs, thereby freeing up that position for a more worthy car-owner. They're just poor people and convicts anyway.  Right?

That maybe part of the problem...........the poor and the convicted! That just might be why, when I have ridden the bus, none of the middle management and up are ever on them........infact I would bet my first born, none of them ever have!

[urbaknight]

Don't forget about the disabled, especially those who can't, DRIVE A CAR! Such as due to a sight disability, like myself. Or those who's disability subjects them to discrimination in the job market, and therefore, can't afford to buy a car. The disabled are also looked upon unfavorably by JTA.

[urbaknight]

That's why I take personal interest in seeing the entire management of JTA fired and replaced.

[CS Foltz]

urbaknight...........rightfully so! Real public transportation ain't it?

[ChriswUfGator]

It is nigh impossible to determine the actual number of discrete riders taking public transportation. Unless the entire city is outfitted with personal bus cards with photos imprinted, good luck. I can let my friend borrow my pass on the weekends if I don't need it, so is that one rider or two on that pass?

Regardless to whether the system is "designed" to force all transferring passengers through DT, most public trans isn't designed to be single-leg journeys anyway.  

I personally think half the challenges with the current system map are the convoluted bus routes that take you through hells half-acre instead of a more direct route.  There are adequate "main roads" within this city that need dedicated service.  From there, how about we branch off into smaller routes that can offer neighborhood access?  

Someone give me a map of Jacksonville and a full set of Sharpies...

That hasn't been true for nearly a decade now. Public transit agencies have adopted card-based access systems almost across the board. JTA also adopted this technology. So JTA is well aware of how many connecting passengers it has, and how many actual bodies it carries, since it logs individual rider card swipes when they enter the bus. Doing the math is a no-brainer on this one, since JTA knows how many cards it issues and are used, vs. its cash revenues. These figures are easily ascertainable, and no doubt JTA knows what they are. They just don't release them. And it doesn't matter who is using a card, as only one person at a time is using one card.

It's also not true to say that other transit authorities do the same thing, as since card-based technology has become available some do break out the number of actual passengers. The MTA is one example. You're making excuses here. The figures are easily ascertainable.  

[tufsu1]

this is not correct Chris...while most transit agencies have adopted cards for weekly/monthly passes, many still accept payment on the bus...and when one transfers, they get a pull-off ticket from the driver (that are rarely trcaked).

[Singejoufflue]

No excuses.  Just a little reasonable logic, Chris.  Any amount of information from a transit agency will be fluffed, fudged, smoothed, corrected, however you want to put it.  I can't count the number of times a CTA bus, en route, wasn't accepting cash fares due to a jammed box.  So, they took a manual count which isn't accurate.  But then, when you have 1.6M boardings per day, no one cares about 15 riders missing from one bus.

I think the problem here in Jax is so few individual riders of the system.  Transfers, connections, whatever you want to call them, by JTA's own admission: 10-12K riders per day.  When I take the bus, I see perhaps 30% of the riders use a pass. The rest of us are plunking our change and bills into the machine.  How many of the 10-12K riders are taking JTA as exclusive means of transportation?  The same percentage as use the passes? The rest are frequent but casual passengers, I would wager.

What efforts are being made to get the middle class white people on JTA?  That will be a main stumbling point in increasing ridership outside of route improvements.  Jane Q. Suburbanite isn't putting her $100 Banana Republic-clad butt on a JTA seat where some poor black person from the Northside just got up. If Jane Q. doesn't need the system, she might think it easier to buy 10-12K cheap old cars, pass them out and ditch mass transit.

[Doctor_K]

If Jane Q. doesn't need the system, she might think it easier to buy 10-12K cheap old cars, pass them out and ditch mass transit.

Or scale back from the huge (and thus more-empty) buses they have now and deploy more shuttle-sized buses all over the place.  Probably a lower cost to maintain and certainly I'd assume the smaller shuttle-types would get better mileage than the 4-5mpg that the bigg'uns get now.

[ChriswUfGator]

this is not correct Chris...while most transit agencies have adopted cards for weekly/monthly passes, many still accept payment on the bus...and when one transfers, they get a pull-off ticket from the driver (that are rarely trcaked).

Right, but that certainly wouldn't stop them from calculating the figures, tufsu. JTA knows how many cards are swiped vs. how much cash they bring in on a daily basis, so calculating how many riders used cards vs. cash is a total non-issue. They already know this. Then determining how many connecting passengers exist as a percentage of the total ridership is also a no-brainer, since you can determine that easily from how many times each individual card is swiped on each trip, and comparing that to the general population of card-using riders. Then you simply take that figure and expand the percentage of connections to the percentage of cash riders, combine them, and then deduct the connections from the total, and you now have the number of actual people using the system.

Hardly rocket science, and easily done.

[ChriswUfGator]

No excuses.  Just a little reasonable logic, Chris.  Any amount of information from a transit agency will be fluffed, fudged, smoothed, corrected, however you want to put it.  I can't count the number of times a CTA bus, en route, wasn't accepting cash fares due to a jammed box.  So, they took a manual count which isn't accurate.  But then, when you have 1.6M boardings per day, no one cares about 15 riders missing from one bus.

I think the problem here in Jax is so few individual riders of the system.  Transfers, connections, whatever you want to call them, by JTA's own admission: 10-12K riders per day.  When I take the bus, I see perhaps 30% of the riders use a pass. The rest of us are plunking our change and bills into the machine.  How many of the 10-12K riders are taking JTA as exclusive means of transportation?  The same percentage as use the passes? The rest are frequent but casual passengers, I would wager.

What efforts are being made to get the middle class white people on JTA?  That will be a main stumbling point in increasing ridership outside of route improvements.  Jane Q. Suburbanite isn't putting her $100 Banana Republic-clad butt on a JTA seat where some poor black person from the Northside just got up. If Jane Q. doesn't need the system, she might think it easier to buy 10-12K cheap old cars, pass them out and ditch mass transit.

Well I must admit I was stunned when I found out the total number of riders is 10k. That is really quite low for a system that requires the amount of funding this one sucks up.

[CS Foltz]

But just like City Hall..............there is no waste right?

[Singejoufflue]

The costs are so extraordinary because this city is transporting 10K people from one end of the county to the other on convoluted routes by unionized bus drivers who think 38K a year is too little for driving the means streets of Duval 8 hours per day.  If you see ridership increase the cost per person of our transit is reduced dramatically. 

The larger a city is, the more classes are forced to blend in situations like mass transit.  You see businessmen and vagabonds sitting next to each other going to downtown Chicago every day.  Little old ladies with 40-yr old shopping carts and gangbangers taking the bus at 6am.  How do we translate that to Jacksonville terms? 

[tufsu1]

um...not sure where you get the 10,000 figure from....JTA has been averaging over 40,000 riuders a day for many years.

Unless you are trying to detrmine approximatlely how many different people ride the system each day...if that is the case, then we've known that JTA gets about a 2% mode split....so if Duval County has 750,000 residents, then JTA is likely getting about 15,000 unique people.

[ChriswUfGator]

um...not sure where you get the 10,000 figure from....JTA has been averaging over 40,000 riuders a day for many years.

Unless you are trying to detrmine approximatlely how many different people ride the system each day...if that is the case, then we've known that JTA gets about a 2% mode split....so if Duval County has 750,000 residents, then JTA is likely getting about 15,000 unique people.

That figure came from the horses mouth, jta.

[Singejoufflue]

The 10-12K figure I found was from a TU article on the driver contract negotiations, not JTA directly. (my bad for stating otherwise)

I am deeply concerned with individual riders.  Certainly connections count toward usage, but increasing the number of riders should be JTA's #1 priority.  Bus shelters, consistent schedule-adherence, amenities at the transit hubs, customer service, and education of the public need to be in place ASAP to grow ridership.