There’s some interesting data in the graphic accompanying this Dispatch story. Of course, knowing if a park and ride is 20% full or 80% full doesn’t tell you much about how many people are using it unless you know how big the lot is, but it’s still fun to see this information. What’s more interesting to me though is seeing the locations proposed for new park and rides. Looks like a good effort to expand service.
More riding buses, but not parking to catch one
Monday, April 25, 2011 03:04 AM
By Robert Vitale
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCHPeople are riding: COTA carried 20,000 more passengers on its buses last week than it did during the same week of 2010.
But they’re not parking: The agency’s own counts show that its 29 park-and-ride lots were barely one-quarter full, on average, over the past year, despite seven months of rising gasoline prices.
Central Ohio Transit Authority officials say they’re not bothered by the largely empty commuter lots, even those located along busy routes and in growing suburbs.
In fact, the agency is considering six more park-and-rides in its newest five-year plan; all would be outside the Outerbelt – on Columbus’ Far East Side and in the Polaris area, as well as in Canal Winchester, Dublin, Grove City and Westerville.
It’s no surprise that COTA ridership is up with the higher gas prices. I don’t know how many people rode COTA during last week in 2010, but the average ridership in 2009 was about 339,000 per week. If that is consistent (it’s probably not), then a 20,000 rider per day bump would mean a nearly 6% increase in ridership. Not bad at all!
Check out the #2 schedule.
http://www.cota.com/assets/Riding-Cota/Schedules/Current/002h.pdf
They left out stop #5 N Broadway. Whoops. Hope new riders are good at guesstimating.