Technically, the M15 and M15SBS are two routes - one express and one local. The 55,000 number for the 99 in Vancouver is only the express route. Route 9 (central and east side) and 14 (west and central side) are the local service on the corridor, which have a ridership of 25,000 and 18,000 respectively. Add them all up and you get a corridor ridership of 98,000.

The New York MTA lists M15 Local/SBS as a single "local" route.

In principle, it should open by 2020.

In practice, they're fighting over how to cheap out. The city wants to build a subway only as far as Arbutus, which serves the Central Broadway employment clusters but does less than nothing for UBC (the buses are still going to be crush-loaded, only they won't be able to use 4th Avenue as a relief route as much). UBC wants light rail instead of SkyTrain, which sort of helps UBC-bound commuters but does very little for Central Broadway.

The problem is that the region thinks that SkyTrain is for places where they can rezone and build a few high-rises next to each station. The neighborhoods in and west of Central Broadway are some of the densest in the region outside Downtown, but it's density that comes from lots of low- and mid-rise buildings and just a few high-rises, so it doesn't count. Never mind that the projected cost per rider for this is the same as the actual cost per rider of the Millennium and Canada Lines and the projected one of the Evergreen Line.

Might that be because the streetcar lines are located in denser areas, or just routes with more destinations, or even just run with higher frequencies. (Since the streetcars were probably place in the best routes, though I know little of the details of Toronto)

don't have the stats on hand but I think the Wilshire Blvd and Geary Blvd buses may be as high or higher

Mother of god, 100,000 riders on a bus line? We have nothing that's even in the same universe (of course we have higher rail ridership). That's insane. There's no way that's cost efficient. With operating savings it would take about 10 minutes to recoup the cost of streetcar upgrade on a line like that.

The other ~50,000 bus route I'm aware of is the 16th Street Shuttle in Denver, but it's a different animal. Only 1 mile long and free all the time. Minneapolis' Nicollet Street Shuttle is probably similar.

Yeah..... after seeing 100,000 ridership on a bus route I'm even thinking of taking it a step further and upgrading to HRT.

Does anyone know where to find weekend ridership numbers?

Average Weekend Ridership = (Annual Riders - (250 * Weekday Riders)) / 115

That is assuming a year with 52 weekends and the state/province have 11 holidays per year.

SF has some lines at or near 50k--the 38 Geary carries 52,800 passengers each weekday, the 9 San Bruno carries 48,000, and the 14 Mission carries 42,200.

Philadelphia SEPTA:

Subway: 296,000

The light rail numbers have been posted and they look about right.

Nexis, I've never seen official numbers that put SEPTA's light rail ridership above the likes of Boston, Portland and San Francisco and I've been looking at numbers like that for a long, long time.

I'd wager that the percentage of trolley trips that either begin or end in the subway portion of the route would be no less than the mid-80s. As you say, there's no way to make a good point with his distinction because there isn't one to make.

In the Wilshire corridor in Los Angeles the 720 (Metro Rapid) gets 41000 and the 20 (local) gets 17,000

The 99-B a pretty low-cost bus, because it's frigging' crush-loaded much of the time. A subway would be much more efficient, though. A streetcar would have the same problems of capacity as a bus - in fact the peak of peak would get worse because the traffic overwhelms both the 99-B and some of the relief routes that wouldn't be served by a streetcar, like the 84.

Here is the current set of alternatives discussed:

http://www.translink.ca/en/Plans-and...e-Designs.aspx

Streetcars would obviously still be stuck in traffic just like the bus, but streetcars can have massively more capacity.

A simple illustration:

https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8149/...2244d944_c.jpg
Photo by Keith McGilivray

^Indeed. A tram is in a way a extreme-high capacity bus that also adds greatly to passenger comfort, permanence that attracts investment near the line and increases ridership on the line. By adding riders to the line it makes for fewer taking other forms of transport (cars!) in the area and thus makes for better traffic than buses.
To me it is obvious that both trams and subways should be part of a city's transit system. It's a question of which line should have what.
/tired of people who want trams bashing subways and subway proponents bashing trams.


___________

Stockholm numbers for 2011
County population 2.1M (the whole metro area, all covered by one transit agency)

Modal share:
Transit: 26%
Car: 43%
Walk: 27%
Bike: 4%

Total ridership on an average weekday:
739 000

/gah, the reports made by SL suck at showing real numbers on this. They used to be pretty good, now they suck.

Yes, but there are more factors at play. Simply building a tram / streetcar along Broadway is not feasible. First, it would require an unnecessary transfer from the M-line to the tram (currently the M-Line skytrain will simply be extended under Broadway asa subway).

Also, Broadway has extremely short blocks, making traffic cueing and station spacing far more difficult.

The road is also relatively narrow, and is the main artery for all forms of traffic in that area. Nearly all street parking would be gone, there would be turning restrictions on 90% of intersections, thats right, 90%, making traffic chaos.

Also, sidewalk (pedestrian) and bike lane space would be severely restricted.

Another factor is the speed of travel would not see any major improvements, and ridership would still be limited.

The only true solution is skytrain under Broadway as a subway. That way, Broadway will not be restricted for vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists, ridership will have room to more than triple, the speed of travel would more than double I believe, and there would still be the local #9 bus for short block to block stops.

Skytrain is the only sensible long term solution along the Broadway corridor. In fact, developers are already anticipating subway rather than LRT in their new tower proposals along the route (for example some new office projects are already being designed with subterranean subway access points).

There is also the factor that if LRT is built, it would require a new OMC, and building any such facility along the Broadway corridor where land values are sky high would be incredibly expensive, not to mention new rolling stock, paying drivers, delays caused by accidents, etc...

Building a grade separated automated metro system is the best decision that was ever made for Metro-Vancouver.

The Exposition Phase 2 Extension and the Foothill Extension to Azusa should open in late 2015 or sometime in 2016. Crenshaw is a bit later than 2016 - probably late 2018 or some time in 2019. Regional Connector follows. All other light-rail projects are much later per teh LRTP; however, could be accelerated to if LACMTA can secure funding sooner. See the 30-10 Initiative or America Fast Forward.

That said, I'd suspect 2016 ridership to be in the mid 400,000 range.

What Metro-One said. Turn restrictions on Broadway would make it even harder to cross than it already is because stoplight phasing would get more complex. Elimination of parking would eliminate the existing buffer between pedestrians and car traffic, which has the same effect as narrowing the sidewalk; on major arterial streets like that, often the livable streets solution is to allow rather than prohibit parking, and community activists on Queens Boulevard in Sunnyside in New York have proposed allowing parking all day as a way of making the street pedestrian-friendlier.

Although a tram would still have about twice the capacity of a bus, even more than twice is required to satisfy the UBC peak of peak; present demand overwhelms both the 99-B and the relief lines, including the 84, which is actually faster than the 99-B for passengers transferring from the Millennium Line. Two tram lines would have enough capacity, but Vancouver has an unusually low subway premium on construction costs, and so two trams would cost the same as a single subway.

From wikipedia,

Edmonton LRT is at 95,315. Not bad for one line and only 15 stations. The new line will open next year

Phoenix LR: 42,000 and growing, surpassing the 28,000 estimate during construction.

It is currently one line, 20 miles in length, opened in 2008. Currently being extending by 6 miles. Approximately 3 miles on the west end in Phoenix, and 3 miles on the east end of line into downtown Mesa.

The Airport's $1 billion, automated people mover, Phase 1 - opens 1Q 2013 will connect to the LR line increasing LR numbers.

Shanghai Metro currently has an average ridership (as of March 2012 - it's probably higher now due to the opening of new track at the end of 2012) of 6.5 million per day, making it the 5th busiest Metro in the world (after Seoul, Tokyo, Moscow, and Beijing).