[sustran] Re: Ridership predictions, urban rail transit

Craig Townsend townsend at central.murdoch.edu.au
Fri Oct 19 11:08:07 JST 2001


There was a lack of independent study of the 24km elevated heavy rail 
Bangkok Transit System which opened in late 1999. The project was a solely 
private sector undertaking, and the company responsible is alleged to have 
paid consultants to produce inflated ridership forecasts in order to secure 
finance and encourage private investors (including the World Bank). In 
defence of the company responsible, the city government (the Bangkok 
Metropolitan Administration) had made commitments to provide certain 
improvements around stations and to contribute to a re-organization of the 
public buses to feed the stations and these commitments were not met. The 
forecasts were for 400,000-600,000 passengers per day (no one ever really 
took the high end forecasts seriously) and actual ridership at present was 
recently estimated at 220,000 passengers per day. While it is considered a 
failure because it hasn't met ridership forecasts, to most people in 
Bangkok it is considered a good thing for a number of other reasons (it is 
estimated that 40,000 of the daily passengers were previously driving), and 
ways are currently being looked at to extend the system and to integrate it 
with the subway that is currently under construction (it is likely that the 
subway will also have trouble meeting its forecasts in the absence of 
government actions to rationalize bus services and improve pedestrian 
access to stations). It should be noted that the BTS is charging premium 
fares which are in some cases 10 times the fare for a bus running on the 
same route, and the per km ridership per day is actually higher than 
Singapore's MRT in the first year of operations.

There is a similar story to be told about Kuala Lumpur's two private LRT 
systems.

In a paper presented in July at the WCTR in Seoul, Roger Mackett presented 
a paper (co-authored by Ela Babalik) analyzing 8 LRT systems. According to 
this paper, San Diego Trolley (80.4km), St Louis Metrolink (27.2km), 
Vancouver Skytrain (28.9km), and Manchester Metrolink (31.0km) all met or 
exceeded their forecasts. Miami Metrorail (33.8km), Sacramento Light Rail 
(29.2km), Sheffield Supertram (29.0km), and Newcastle upon Tyne Tyne and 
Wear Metro (59.1km) did not meet their forecasts.

I have been told that one of the most successful (i.e. actual patronage far 
exceeded forecasts) new LRTs is in Turkey, but I don't have the details.


At 06:38 PM 18/10/01 +0400, you wrote:
>Hi everyone -
>
>Can anyone point me to a reference on predicted vs. actual ridership
>for new urban rail transit systems? (or better still qute some
>examples). I saw something in a mag. recently saying that quite a few
>in the US recently have failed to meet expectations - and I know
>Bangkok has been accused of the same.
>
>Cheers, Alan
>--
>Alan & Jacqui Howes, Dubai, UAE (Otherwise Perthshire, Scotland)
>alaninthegulf at yahoo.co.uk (Alan)        cybermog57 at yahoo.co.uk (Jacqui)
>http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/alanhowes/  [Needs Updating!]

________________________________________________
Craig Townsend
Institute for Sustainability & Technology Policy
Murdoch University
South Street, Murdoch
Perth, Western Australia 6150

tel: (61 8) 9360 6278
fax: (61 8) 9360 6421
email: townsend at central.murdoch.edu.au



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