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Public Transit Ridership in the United States

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[quote user="schlimm"] There are 300,000 commuters in the Chicago suburbs who ride Metra daily to and from downtown Chicago.  They choose to do so because we have a long tradition of excellent suburban rail service, which for many people is superior to driving , not because they cannot afford a car or some other reason, such as inaccessibility as suggested by the OP.. [/quote] Suburban riders are a relatively small component of transit users.  Clearly, more often than not, if my experiences in New York City, Dallas, and Melbourne are relevant indicators, the people who can afford to live in the suburbs and ride commuter trains tend to be cut from different cloth than town folks who ride transit. According to the American Public Transportation Association, in 2010 Chicago area transit agencies had 627,669,100 passengers trips on all modes of transit.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population of the Chicago Metropolitan Statistical Area (Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake and Will counties in Illinois and Lake County in Indiana was 10,055,638. OMB defines a slightly larger area with a somewhat smaller population. Approximately 77 per cent of the population was over 18. The numbers would vary somewhat between the suburbs and the city core. If one assumes that everyone over 18 was a potential transit rider for every 2010 day, 17.1 per cent of the population have used transit.  However, this probably is a bit unrealistic. The other end of the spectrum would be to assume that the population only used transit for work, in which case 24 per cent of the population would have used it.  This number is also a bit unrealistic because it assumes that everyone is a potential rider, which is unrealistic, and it excludes everyone under 18, which is also unrealistic since some of the riders, especially in the city, probably are under 18. Moreover, if we assume that most of the riders made a round trip, the per cent of the population using public transit would be cut in half.   To get a true picture of transit riders in Chicago, one would have to slice and dice the numbers much more than is feasible from a distance. Nevertheless, it is probably fair to conclude that whilst transit ridership is considerably higher in the Chicago area than the nation as a whole, the majority of people don't use it. The actual motives for why people choose transit, if they have a choice, would require a robust study. In 2007 I asked Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) for a breakdown of every bus, light rail, and commuter rail line in the Dallas area.  Much to my surprise they sent me Excel worksheets for every route.  They also showed me the results of several customer surveys that they had completed.  The surveys showed, amongst other things, that 43 per cent of the city bus riders did not have a car or an alternative mode of transport.  Also, 21 per cent of the light rail passengers did not have an alternative mode of transport.  As one might imagine, the motives for suburban riders was markedly different than the motives for many of the city riders.
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