Going over some (now slightly outdated) ridership data for our buses...these are average weekday boards during the school year (based on ridership from Feb/Mar and Sep 2017) Systemwide: 43,129 Busiest route (free): 5,179 Busiest route (w/fare): 3,767
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Two routes didn't run during school year weekdays, Route 20E (was Saturdays only, now runs weekdays and Saturdays) and Route 36 (only runs during school holidays), so their ridership showed up as zero
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Two routes had less than 50 boards on an average weekday: Route 98 (soon to be eliminated) with 37, and Route 12 (literally a non-stop shuttle from Springfield to the jail in Ludlow, funded by the sheriff's dpt) with just 26 Another four routes had between 100 and 200
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Routes with below 200 daily boards amount to less than half of a percent of total system ridership--there were 8 routes in that category in fall 2017 Routes with 200~650 daily boards fall between 0.5 and 1.5 of total rideship each--there were 14 routes in that category
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What can you take away from this? There are several corridors in Western MA where bus transit--for all its limitations--is clearly viable. Free trips on certain routes skew this effect, but it shows up even on paid routes (4 of the 6 busiest routes charge fares)
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On the other hand, a lot of routes clearly aren't useful to many people--some might be redeemable with better frequency or restructuring, others won't. Sorting these routes out will free up resources that could be poured back into the effective routes for a net gain in riders.
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Solving the revenue problem will mean increasing the % of revenue that comes from fares rather than from state, federal, and local allocations--to do this, we need more riders *and* higher fares per rider. Neither is possible until the busiest routes are also the best to ride!
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End of conversation
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