Each spring Metro conducts a survey of its bus and rail passengers to generate feedback about the agency. The 2011 survey was conducted last spring and summer with nearly 15,000 respondents. The results are posted below from both bus and train riders, along with the combined results.
As you can see, the results are not dramatically different than from 2010 — and the vast majority of passengers say they are satisfied with Metro’s service. The results also show another uptick in the number of Metro riders with cell phones — now 75 percent, with 64 percent of those smart phones — and a four percent increase in the number of passengers using TAP cards.
When reading the results, the first number is for “strongly agree,” the second number for “agree,” the third number for “disagree” and the fourth number for “strongly disagree.” As usual, Metro followed industry-standard survey practices.
What do you think of the results? Do they mirror your experiences on Metro? What do you think they say about the Metro system? Leave a comment please.
The individual survey results for bus and rail riders are posted after the jump.
Some interesting things to note here… it’s clear that busses are more often a “because I have no other option” ride (only 25% said they had a car available) while over 40% of rail passengers had a car available and CHOSE to Go Metro instead (I’m one of those). This is one of the main reasons I’m generally a proponent of expanding the rail system. While we shouldn’t cut bus service from those who need it, we also should focus on making those who don’t need it choose it, and rail has typically had more success with this.
Also interesting to see that while satisfaction was in the 70-90% range for rail passengers (questions 1-6, related to general satisfaction, ticketing, schedules, etc.), it was considerably down (about from 5-20 percent!) from last year. At the same time, satisfaction of bus passengers was even or slightly up. I wonder why the drop in satisfaction from 2010-2011… Things may not be perfect, but I certainly don’t think they’ve gotten worse. Have expectations been raised?