Missing from this discussion is Salt Lake City, which is home to the UTA FrontRunner. In the first half of the year this one 89-mile line in little ol' Utah carried over
2.5 million passengers, which is makes it the 11th busiest commuter rail line in the country. It beats out Sound Transit in Seattle, Virginia Railway Express near Washington DC, Trinity Railway Express in Dallas, and Tri-Rail in Florida, just to name a few. These cities are much larger than Salt Lake City, so how is UTA able to get more riders?
The answer is they run
a lot of trains:
Sixty three departures from Salt Lake City every weekday, and 42 departures on Saturday. People hate being trapped by a transit schedule, so the best thing to improve ridership is to run more often and expand the hours in which trains operate.