Thousands of Angelenos were out and about this past weekend, many heading out for the Festival of Books, CicLAvia, Grand Prix of Long Beach – or all three! Ridership for the weekend jumped about 18% on rail compared to the numbers the prior weekend. There was an increase of more than 49,000 rail boardings on Sunday alone. The biggest increase was on the Expo Line, which was expected considering its stations at USC and Culver City and its connection to the Blue Line at 7th/Metro. Ridership on Expo was up 85% over the previous weekend.
Bus ridership dipped by about 3.5% in comparison to April 13 – 14, which isn’t unusual and was probably due to the numerous bus detours in place for the large outdoor events.
Overall, service ran smoothly with no major delays during the events. This isn’t to say there weren’t a few hiccups – bike crowding was an issue, and that’s something Metro will look to address as CicLAvia continues to grow in size and popularity.
Categories: Metro Lifestyle
@ HarryKerryJr, “voice of reasoning” more like backward thinking!
[…] And look what we did: http://thesource.metro.net/2013/04/23/metro-rail-saw-increased-ridership/ […]
I have an idea: all seats removed from Metro trains should be put back and let the bicyclists actually use their bikes as transportation. This would give bicyclists better health and great opportunity to see the city without the stress of displacing elderly, the poor, people with medical conditions or others while providing the space to those who can’t use a bicycle as an alternative to a bus or train. This would increase efficiency as those with bikes are on the street where they belong (stopping at all red lights and stop signs, I presume. Although I have only witnessed bicyclists blowing through both of those) and those who can’t use a bicycle as transportation are afforded the space and they deserve without someone bumping them with their filthy bike, nor itching for fights on trains because people on an SRO train won’t get out of the area where seats are removed, as if there is room for those people to move.
I think the answer is to make streets far more accommodating to bicycles. There is far more space on the roadways to work with, and drivers are just going to have to give a bit, but it is not realistic to expect buses or trains to accommodate bikes much more than they do today simply because there is NO ROOM to do so, and forcing some folks to stand as this makes public transit UN-appealing to choice riders and is worse than forcing some driver to sit in his A/C luxury car. Making driving UN-appealing isn’t quite as bad as the alternatives. Consider us the voice of reason among the sea of “bicyclists first” who seem to dominate this site.
Yes, Metro should increase their entire fleet system wide. Depending on the line, 16.7% to 50% of vehicles should be seatless and should sit idle awaiting CICLAVIA. CICLAVIA happens 3 times a year, lets get to it.
Red Line 1 of 6 = 16.7%
Expo Line 1 of 3 cars = 33%
Gol Line 1 of 2 cars = 50%
How much do rail cars cost, anyway? Can’t be more than $200k. How many total rail cars are needed? I’d guess about 15. Shouldn’t be more than $3 million dollars.
I have an idea on how one might reduce bike crowding on Metro. My boyfriend and I went to CicLAvia from Sherman Oaks. We biked from Sherman Oaks to the Red Line, and then took the Red Line to Macarthur Park. We would have ridden all the way to CicLAvia, but although there are about 40 car lanes through the Hollywood Hills, there is not one bike lane. We would have gotten off the Red Line at a station in Hollywood or K’town but there is not one continuous north-south bike lane anywhere between Downtown and the Ocean.
Hi Jeff;
Couldn’t agree more. As bad as the east-west bike connections are south of the Santa Monicas, the north-south connections somehow manage to be worse (calling them connections is a charitable description).
Same goes with Valley-L.A. Basin connections; I had lunch yesterday with someone who bikes from NoHo to UCLA using Beverly Glen. Commendable and brave, for sure–and I would never do it.
Unless I’m mistaken — and someone feel free to jump in — the best way from Valley to downtown one day will be the L.A. River path and then from there people can try to go east-west.
Ideas people? Anyone know of anything in the works?
Steve Hymon
Editor, The Source
That’s a good really idea. I ride every single day. I have seen an increase of bikes on buses and the rails. Ask your bus drivers how many times they encounter a rider with bike that has to wait for the next bus because the racks are full.
I thought same thing while on the Red Line it would have been nice to have one car with no seats.
I agree with Jose. I rode the Expo and Red lines this on Sunday (CicLAvia) where I expected no-seat cars for us with bicycles. I appreciated the extra Metro staff on hand to keep things flowing. These same people could have directed those with bikes to no-seat cars… but, oh well. Maybe next time.
i wasn’t on the Expo this Sunday, so not sure how things were configured. but can’t you remove seats on an entire car and designate it as a bike car for special events such as CicLAvia? I think that would still leave plenty of seating and with the 6 min headways, there won’t be as much crowding.