The New York Times has a nifty map and accompanying story that chronicles ridership drops in 2009 on the city's subway; construction and the crappy economy ate away 2.7 percent of the rail system's ridership since 2008. Over here, this city's Metro reports an uptick in rail ridership, though they're calculating monthly year-to-year numbers, rather than entire annual boardings (New York's rail system still attracts about 15 times more people). LA's nascent rail system attracted 7,664,748 boardings in March 2008, 8,064,477 in March 2009 (a 5.2 percent increase), and 8,471,487 in March 2010 (a 5 percent uptick). This latest March, every line save for the Blue Line saw increases (the Red and Purple lines are calculated together) with the Gold Line seeing the biggest rise in ridership from this year to last, likely because the extension into East LA opened in November. In their calculations, Metro includes the following note, "Beginning in December 2007, data received from newly installed Ticket Vending Machines on the Red, Green, and Blue Lines made it possible to begin calculating ridership with much greater accuracy than previously. As a result, it is difficult to find meaning in comparing ridership estimates made prior to that time with the current and extremely accurate estimates." The whole Metro system, including buses, saw a slight month-to-month increases every March since 2008, from 40,496,063 to 41,029,873 to 41,080,481.
· Subway's Decline and Growth in 2009 [NY Times]
· Ridership Statistics [Metro]
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