Tuesday, April 14, 2009

New Times still doesn't get light rail

Phoenix New Times has a libertarian streak that emerges from time to time in its opposition to light rail (although sadly they don’t seem to apply the same limited government philosophy to new freeway construction). This week the online version of the paper took a shot at the train, suggesting in a misleading headline that “light rail ridership [was] on decline…”

While average daily ridership in March dropped 3% from February’s numbers, there are a couple points to keep in mind. First, the March totals represented the first time average ridership has fallen, so it’s really not fair to suggest that ridership is on the decline, as if to imply some sort of trend. Perhaps this is the start of a trend as the warmer months approach, and perhaps not. We won’t know for sure until future numbers are released by Metro.

Second, and more importantly, the New Times needs to remember the baseline. For years, Metro estimated that 26,000 riders would board the train on an average day during light rail’s first year. By this measure, the train is a huge success: even the March figures (31,000+ per day) are almost 20% above the estimate. Even if ridership falls significantly during the summer, Metro is probably still a sure bet to exceed its own initial ridership estimate for the first year.

Finally, New Times is probably best-advised to avoid predicting ill fates for the light rail; the paper’s credibility in that area is somewhat shot after it ran a story last May giving the train little hope of opening on time. As we now know, light rail opened at the end of December on the exact date it announced years earlier.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm glad I'm not the only one to notice this. I'm not surprised at Sarah Fenske's naysaying about rail. She's always been happy to play the cranky libertarian. What's more surprising is the one-sided, overly negative blogging coming from Ray Stern. Just a year or two ago, he wrote a very positive, in-depth article called "Stop Your Railing." I wish I could understand what changed his point of view, or is just New Times policy to be contrary for the sake of being contrary?

Khamis said...

I detest the New Times, they are as much of a farce as any other PHX print.

Ray Stern said...

Don't be such Kool-Aid drinkers. My reporting has covered the downs and ups of ridership over the last few months.

I disagree with the implication that it's okay for Metro to use a headline that says "Metro ridership in March tops previous months," but not okay for me to state the equally true, "Light-Rail Ridership on Decline; Daily Boardings Dropped in March" in a headline. As I mentioned, it was somewhat tricky of Metro to suddenly mention March in comparison to previous months, when daily ridership actually went down in March. The only reason March "tops previous months" was because it had more days than February.

downtown_resident said...

Ray, thanks for the comment and please feel free to drop by anytime with your perspective.

My issue with the New Times post was that it seemed to lack perspective. It's unfair to run a headline stating that light rail ridership was "on the decline"-- as if to imply a trend-- when ridership had only dropped for one month. In addition, daily ridership figures are still well above Metro's initial ridership estimates, and that fact shouldn't be ignored in analyzing ridership.

In addition, I don't believe I implied that Metro could jump back and forth between the figures it reports. If you look at my post, I exclusively referred to daily ridership totals because I agree that apples should be compared to apples. That said, you need to compare all the apples as I argued in the previous paragraph in this comment.