The ministry of propaganda on the other hand, presents the stats to the public as MAX&WES as being double digit increases and bus as a decrease!
It borders on fraud as far as I am concerned.
Graph 2 on the other hand shows that on time performance of the bus is the lowest. That is 100% the fault of the TRIMET SCHEDULING DEPARTMENT!
5 comments:
Egh, you're both right and wrong Al.
Where you are correct is that both bus and MAX are up the same NUMBER of riders - NOT percentage. So, of TriMet's ridership increase for last month, half of them rode the bus and half of them rode the train.
However, as a percentage, you'll get a higher percentage with MAX because 50,000 is a higher percentage of 700,000, than 50,000 of 1,200,000.
So what TriMet is doing is focusing on the percentage because those numbers look great for rail. If TriMet said that it increased both bus and MAX ridership by 50,000 riders each, that would not present the image that TriMet wants to present (much wider public acceptance of rail versus bus).
What TriMet does is compare to the same month last year (the difference between the solid and dashed lines at the end). As the graph shows, ridership normally fluctuates throughout the year due to people going on vacations, etc (and not commuting). Using that, MAX ridership was much higher than would be expected while bus was not.
However, it is true that, given service and other changes, a year ago isn't always comparable. A better comparison might be the change between adjacent months, e.g. March to April 2010 vs. March to April 2011. Using that, it appears that bus ridership climbed a little more than it did last year, and that MAX ridership jumped when it had previously decreased.
The April figures have been available for a while and now May's are. I'm guessing that they might wait until all the other stats are available to update the page.
As for on-time percentage, some of that is because buses suffer from traffic, detours and other issues. MAX and WES have their own paths and LIFT only has to arrive within 30 minutes to be on-time. However, it probably is possible to achieve better, e.g. by getting buses to start out on-time.
A better comparison might be the change between adjacent months, e.g. March to April 2010 vs. March to April 2011
No, that would not make sense.
It's a given that you will have lower commuter traffic in, say, July and August (as well as the near-total loss of PSU traffic which makes up a considerable amount of TriMet traffic); also December gets hit with many government offices going on furlough and people taking vacations.
So, you would NEVER want to compare August and September stats together. You would NEVER compare December with January. And you have better weather and more public events in May than you do in April (while the extended vacations don't really start until June)...
I do these sorts of comparisons all the time at my work, each day. Months are very important, however you need to consider other factors (i.e. better weather one year versus the next) that could skew your numbers. But taking two adjacent months versus month of year introduces far more issues that results in an "apples to oranges" comparison.
So, you would NEVER want to compare August and September stats together.
I agree.
What I am proposing is comparing the rate of change between those months in one year vs. the rate of change between those same months in another year. Yes schools let out, but that happens every year.
better weather one year versus the next
Well a good comparison would include notes about things like that. A perfect comparison can be impossible to achieve.
the near-total loss of PSU traffic which makes up a considerable amount of TriMet traffic
It's not like some transit systems that have major service reductions when the school is out.
The point I was trying to make is that TRIMET intentionally puffs up the rail side!
They manipulate the facts, and that's not right!
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