Commuter Rail Ridership up 11% in Philly
Philly follows the national trend of double digit increases in the number of riders on it’s mass transit systems:
Spurred largely by soaring fuel prices, ridership on commuter rail lines is up here and around the country.
On SEPTA Regional Rail, that’s 2.8 million more trips, or an 11 percent increase, over last fiscal year. And on the 14-mile PATCO High-Speed Line, average weekday ridership is 35,138, up fron nearly 33,000 a year ago.
June 10, 2008 7:45 am 
I live in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Milwaukee, WI with my wife Jen, our daughter Emerson, and son Carter.; ?>/images/feed-icon-16x16.gif){kind=icon}
By Sean, June 10, 2008 @ 11:09 am
So what?
By smitty, June 10, 2008 @ 7:53 pm
This still won’t get me on a Milwaukee bus.
By Daniel Cody, June 10, 2008 @ 7:58 pm
“So what” is exactly why we’re at where we are today, and is a good summary of the conservative side of the debate about mass transit in general.
By Sean, June 10, 2008 @ 9:55 pm
Dan,
The reason I ask that question, in the fashion that I ask it, is you are bringing up and posting about things that have literally nothing to do with the Milwaukee situation. Philadelphia has double the city population Milwaukee does, metro area is 3 times the size of metro Milwaukee, and they are smack dab in the middle of NY, Newark, Baltimore and Washington D.C..
Citing double digit increase in mass transit in city after city (especially top 5 cities like Philadelphia) is simply not a valid argument for middle size sprawling markets (like Milwaukee) to expand their transit to things like light rail or electric/above ground trains.
I realize gas is up, bus ridership is increasing, and in other cities their mass transit use is up, but in Milwaukee it’s just not smart to spend 10’s of millions of dollars on a train system (or some other fixed mode of transportation) that the VAST majority of the greater Milwaukee area is not going to use. Granted, it would be wonderful if you could magically drop a subway or light rail infrastructure, the likes of London, Chicago, or NY, in the greater Milwaukee area, (because that’s what it’s going to take for people to rush to use the system), but that’s not possible (logistically or financially).
By Daniel Cody, June 10, 2008 @ 9:57 pm
As I’ve been pointing out over the past month, ridership isn’t just up in top 5 markets on the east coast, but in places like Portland, Seattle, Columbus, Raleigh/Durham, Buffalo, Sacramento, Cincinnati, Salt Lake City, Denver, Las Vegas, San Diego, San Francisco, Dallas, on and on and on.
That is to say, every major metro area in the entire Country is seeing massive increases in the ridership on it’s mass transit systems.
Except Milwaukee.
Personally, I think it’s part of a trend we as a community should be a part of.
Why is it smart for metro areas like Portland or Sacramento to make investments in their transit infrastructure, to the benefit of it’s citizens as proved by increased ridership, but not Milwaukee?
Why are we the exception?
By Sean, June 11, 2008 @ 9:49 am
Why are we the exception? Simple, the systems that most of the cities you cite (and have cited in past posts) are a waste of money! And to answer your other question about Portland and Sacramento….it’s not smart. Yes there is increased ridership, but that is not an argument for having it. Just because every major metro area in the Country has different modes of mass transit than Milwaukee is a poor argument. By that logic, I assume because 48 out of 50 states have some sort of legal allowance for carrying concealed weapons, you will be contacting Tamara Grigsby and Spencer Coggs to push them to vote in favor of Wisconsin becoming the 49th state?
When discussing mass transit, costs to build, maintain, and subsidize have to come into play. We already, as a county, region, and state are having severe budget problems. Why add more costs and increase the tax burden for something that less than 10% of the population uses? Especially considering there are tons of other things to spend money on. Also, this “Field of Dreams” attitude of “if you build it they will come” isn’t anymore true than if you were to, say on the I-94 corridor increase the number of entrance and exit ramps (except that’s a lot cheaper than running a rail line down the same corridor).
Would it be nice to have a monorail, like Las Vegas, or a subway like Boston? Absolutely! The problem is, ‘nice to have’ isn’t always ’should have’.
By smitty, June 11, 2008 @ 4:09 pm
I’ll ride mass transit when: 1) I find it to my advantage to do so
(i.e. when riding a bus/train is cheaper and more convenient than taking a car), 3) when I don’t have to drive my car 10 miles to the train station or bus stop and 3) when it’s safer than riding my car (i.e. I won’t be assaulted by fellow passangers).
By Daniel Cody, June 11, 2008 @ 9:57 pm
Sean, I’m not talking monorail. I’m talking commuter rail. As for the comment about “if you build it they will come”, that is being proved across the Country as I’ve pointed out. If we had a better mass transit system, and specifically a commuter transit line, people would use it. I don’t know how you can dispute that fact.
As for the waste of money comment, I don’t buy that. As gas prices go up, and continue to rise, there’s a substantial amount of money that can be saved by massive numbers of people in SE Wisconsin if they had the option to utilize mass transit instead of paying $4+/gallon of gasoline.
Smitty, understood. It may not be your cup of tea. The safety issue is a new one to me. I guess I missed the news reports of roving gangs of thugs across the Country terrorizing riders of mass transit :)
In a world of “road rage”, I think that’s an odd comment to make.
By Smitty, June 14, 2008 @ 1:43 pm
Dan,
Before moving to Wisconsin, I spent the first 35 years of my life (except for two years in the Army) living and working in New York City. I took public transit all the time. I saw a number of “incidents”, and they never made the news. Back in the 70s and 80s the subways and buses were dirty, full of grafitti, unsafe and antiquated. Of course, NYC’s transit has improved significantly in the last 20 years but there are still areas where you should think twice aboutbefore traveling to or through. Just an another inconvenience a New Yorker accepts and deals with.
By Paul, June 17, 2008 @ 6:03 pm
Why do rail ridership increases elsewhere matter to Milwaukee? How about because Milwaukee has NO rail transit! Which means we are missing out on the economic benefits, the environmental benefits, and the improved traffic flow benefits of rail.
No, Milwaukee is not Seattle or Philly or Chicago. But neither is it Appleton!