[mhays]

Do riders transfer more in SF vs. Chicago? A lot of two-trip commutes maybe? And yeah, having part of your suburbs be a "separate" UA is helpful.

Also, these are stats reported by agencies, much like APTA. Agencies' internal counting can be wildly different depending on methods, like counting tickets, motion through doorways, etc. Further, they can have different standards intentionally.

Sometimes they change of methods and make the news. If I recall Denver's downtown shuttle was one example. Vancouver realized at some point (vaguely recalling from RM Transit on Youtube) that installing station gates resulted in vastly higher ridership than they thought they had with the honor system.