America's Rail Systems by Ridership

[Ocklawaha]

This is the key to passenger count. Y'all might recall a few years ago someone wrote a stupid TU article that "JTA doesn't know how many passengers it carries." http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2010-02-01/story/youre_just_a_rider_to_jta_jacksonville_ridership_count_is_a_mystery

Actually it was/is only a mystery to Larry Hannan who couldn't grasp the concept that there are TWO major ways to count passengers on a transit system. You can count passenger trips (as in from start to finish no matter how many changes enroute) or you can count individual boardings (which is pretty simple). Once JTA started explaining that the passenger might change buses during the same trip his eyes glazed over... LOL!  I remember the typical ignorant rants about 'our stupid bus system,' every one of which reflected more on the writer then on JTA. Here is the official word on these counts:

Linked Passenger Trip
A trip from origin to destination on the transit system. Even if a person must make several transfers during a journey, the trip is counted as one linked trip on the system.

Unlinked Passenger Trips (UPT)
The number of passengers who board public transportation vehicles. Passengers are counted each time they board vehicles no matter how many vehicles they use to travel from their origin to their destination.

[tufsu1]

the same problem exists in traffic counts on roads....we only know the # of cars that pass a specific location....not how many stops they have made along the way, how many times they poass the location, or how many people are in each car.

[Ocklawaha]

Yes, it's pretty basic, Linked trips would get you much closer then unlinked would, but if all linked trips were made by the same 50 people you would be able to tell it from the numbers. A day may be near when technology will allow transit systems to fix a true number on their daily users.

[ProjectMaximus]

22 for me! what what :p And I've purposely never ridden just for pleasure. Only when it was most practical for me to do so.